
THE GOOD 
GREEN WOOD 

CLARENCE HAWKES 




Class _JHLSL41 
Book *Jj~ 



j 



Copyright Is 1 



.'0 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



OTHER NATURE BOOKS 

By This Author 
MASTER FRISKY 

C50c. net) by Mail, 58c. 

" This is a really delightful story of an un- 
usually clever dog." — New York Tribune, 

" Frisky's dog world, companions, and con- 
versations makeup a fascinating biography." 
— Congregationalist. 

" One of the best stories of dog life that has 
yet appeared." — Boston Herald. 



THE LITTLE FORESTERS 

(14 Illustrations, 60c. net) 
By Mail, 70c. 

" A very delightful book descriptive of ani- 
mal and woodland life. Beyond being a 
source of interest and instruction to the wide- 
awake boy and girl, it will serve another high 
end. It will teach kindness towards every 
living creature." — Herald and Presbyter. 

" Each bit of description and incident is 
told accurately and realistically." — Minne- 
apolis Tribune. 



THOMAS Y. CKOWELL & CO. 

NEW YORK 





^CLARENCE HAWKES 



AUTHOR OF "THE LITTLE FORESTERS" 

ILLUSTRATED BY CHARLE5 CQPELAND 




teEJtl 



THOMAS Y- CPvOWELL &. COMPANY 



1904 < 



LiB***V »i CONGRESS 
Two CofHm Received 

JUL 13 1904 

O Ooovrfg-ht Entrv 
CLAS# a XXc. No. 
' COPY B 



Copyright, 1904, 



. Hi 



By Thomas Y. Crowell & Company. 



Published September, zgof. 





CONTENTS. 


PAGE 

, . . . 1 


CHAPTER 

I. A Teacher of Woodcraft 


II. 


Old Ringtail's Waterloo 






22 


III. 


Books in Burning Brooks 






46 


IV. 


The Mischief-Maker . . 






63 


V. 


A Tender Mother . . , 








. 74 


VI. 


An Autumn Ramble. . , 








91 


VII. 


The Plovers' Field Day 








. 102 


VIII. 


The Great Circus Cat 








109 


IX. 


Signs in the Snow . . 








126 


X. 


Signs of the Seasons . 








. 139 



STOEIES OF THE GOOD GBEENWOOD 



CHAPTER I 

A TEACHER OF WOODCRAFT 

No day that I have spent roaming the 
woods with old Ben Wilson will ever be 
quite forgotten. Although, as he flourished 
nearly twenty years ago, some of those 
memories are rather dim. He was never 
known as Mr. Benjamin Wilson, for his 
full name did not fit him, so he was simply 
Old Ben to all the boys whom he fancied, 
for ten miles around. 

He was not an important personage, 
either, so you may wonder just what his 
hold upon your affections was. If I re- 
member rightly, he was not in favor with 
the elders in the prim little New England 



2 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

town where we lived, for many of them 
called him "a lazy good-for-nothing," but 
never anything w T orse than that. 

His great sin seemed to be that he loved 
nature and the wonders of the fields and 
woods, more than most of his prosaic neigh- 
bors, and so took more time to admire them. 

It was a very common sight to see Old 
Ben walking home with one arm full of hick- 
ory saplings and the other filled with springy 
hemlock boughs. The hickories he would 
carefully peel, some rainy day, and then he 
would hang them up in the barn, with a 
weight on the end of each. There in the 
course of time they became the choicest kind 
of trout poles. It was considered as much 
of an honor, by us boys, to be the possessor 
of one of Old Ben's hickory rods, as it was in 
after years to own one of Spalding's best fly 
rods. The hemlock boughs were made into 
bows, strips of woodchuck hide being used 
for the strings. One of these bows made a 
boy of ten as near the counterpart of an 
Apache Indian as he was likely to ever get. 



A TEACHER OF WOODCRAFT 3 

Then there was always an assortment of 
popguns made from the hollow elder, for boys 
who were too small to use the bows ; so was 
it any wonder that we all loved Old Ben ? 

He did not like to take small boys with him 
into the woods. "They air alius hollerin' 
and skeerin' things," he would say. "A 
boy has gut ter be old enough ter hold his 
tongue before he can go with me." I was 
about ten years old when, one May afternoon, 
I made my first pilgrimage with Old Ben to 
the shrine of nature, and I saw more in that 
brief afternoon than I had ever seen before 
in my life. 

" Eyes ain't good for nothin' in the woods, 
without you know how to use um," my guide 
would say. "Most folks go thunderin' 
through the woods, like it was Washington 
street, an' don't see nothin', while the rabbit 
sits under a bush a laughin' behind his paw, 
an' winkin' at the squirrel above him in the 
tree. There ain't one person in ten that can 
see anything in the woods, while really one 
can see more there than anywhere else. " 



4 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

On this particular afternoon we took the 
cow-path leading down through the lane to 
the pasture, after which we struck off into 
the deep woods. 

We had scarcely turned from the path into 
the alder bushes that skirted the woods when 
a small brown bird fluttered out of the grass 
at our feet, and flew into a bush near by, 
where she fluttered about, twittering in an 
excited manner. 

"Now, Harry," said Old Ben seriously, 
" what do you think of that ? " 

"What ? " I asked, for I had seen nothing 
unusual. 

" Why is that 'ere brown bird floppin' up 
out of the grass in that way and then perch- 
in' on that bush an' not flyin' off ? Put your 
wits to work, boy, an' tell me what you think 
on it." 

"I don't think anything of it," I said 
after a moment's thought. "'Tain't any- 
thing but just a brown bird, and they are 
always flying around in the bushes." 

" Eyes, yet they see not, ears, yet they 



A TEACHER OF WOODCRAFT 5 

hear not," repeated Old Ben mournfully, 
" But I don't blame you, boy ; it's our first 
trip together, an' I'll teach you to see things, 
in time. 

"Wal, that there brown bird came out 
from under that bit of a bush by the path an' 
ten ter one there is where her nest is." 

" Why, what makes you think so?" I 
asked in astonishment . 

"Wal," replied Old Ben, thoughtfully, 
"she warn't there for nuthin', birds and 
squirrels don't do things for nuthin'. She 
wouldn't be feedin' there this time o' day, 
for 'tain't neither breakfast time nor supper 
time, besides, don't you see she don't want 
to go away ? She's waitin' to see what you 
an' I are goin' to do about her nest. Uv 
course I may be mistaken, for a feller ain't 
never quite sure in the woods, but let's 
see." 

We knelt down by the bush and poked 
away the grass, and there, sure enough, was 
the nest with five speckled eggs in it. It 
was a very cosy house, lined with hair and 



6 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

sheltered from the wind and rain by the 
bush. 

" Ain't it a pretty home for Mr. and Mrs. 
Browny ? " asked Old Ben, poking the grass 
back as it had been before. 

" Let me take one of the eggs home to 
keep," I said, reaching for it. But to my 
astonishment my companion caught me by 
the wrist. " No, you don't," he said decid- 
edly. "This ain't no nest robbin' expedition, 
not ef I know it. If you hev come with me 
ter rob birds' nests, I am goin' home. Ef 
you take that egg home it means one less 
bird to sing to us and hop about an' look 
pretty. Think uv that." 

I had never thought of it before in just 
that light, and the more I considered, the 
more I became sure that I had no right to 
take this little unhatched bird's life in that 
way. 

" Come on," said my companion," we hev 
disturbed Mrs. Browny long enough ; she is 
gettin' nervous, let's be movin'." So we 
parted the alder bushes and walked on, leav- 



A TEACHER OF WOODCRAFT % 

ing the little house undisturbed and the 
heart of the brown bird glad that we had 
not taken any of her eggs. 

Old Ben glided along as easily in the cover 
as I could go in the open, and he rarely 
made any noise. "Light-foot," we boys 
called him, but with me the case was quite 
different. Every dry twig that I stepped on, 
snapped like a parlor match, and I was 
always stepping on one end of a long stick 
and having the other end fly up with a big 
noise. 

"Harry," said my companion severely, 
after one of these missteps, "you make as 
much racket in the woods as a rhinoceros 
would in a tin shop. Ennybody'd think 
your feet were pile drivers ; why don't you 
let them down easy, like the earth was eggs, 
an' you wuz afraid uv breakin' on urn." 

Presently a brown streak shot across the 
path and was lost to sight in the weeds and 
underbrush. 

" What's that ? " I asked excitedly. 

"Babbit," replied my guide in an under- 



8 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

tone. " Alius when you see a brown streak 
an' can't quite make it out, it's a rabbit, that 
is, ef it is on the ground ; but in winter it 
would be a white streak." 

" What, the same rabbit ? " I asked. 

" Yes," said old Ben seriously. " He has 
got two coats. A brown one that he wears 
in the summer and a white one in winter." 

" Where did he go to ? " I asked. 

" Are you a bat, that you can't see in the 
daytime ? " Ben asked, looking scornfully 
down at me. "He is in just as plain sight 
at this very minute as I be. Use your eyes, 
boy." 

I looked along the path where I had last 
seen the cottontail, while Ben grinned 
broadly. 

" I can't see him," I said at last in a 
whisper. " I don't believe he is in sight." 

" See that old log about twenty feet ahead ? 
Wal, just let your eye run along it to where 
it runs into the bush." I did as I was 
told, and there, squatting under the bush, in 
plain sight, but as still as though he had 



A TEACHER OF WOODCRAFT 9 

been made of brown marble instead of 
quivering nerves and muscles, was the cot- 
tontail. His color blended perfectly with 
that of some last year's dead leaves, and the 
gray brown of the rotten log. He kept so 
still that I almost thought he had turned to 
stone, but if you looked carefully, you could 
see his nose and ears twitch slightly. 

"What makes him keep so still ? " I asked. 
" That is the way he hides," said Ben. " He 
knows better than we do that he is just the 
color of the ground, and if he does not catch 
your eye by some movement that ten to one 
you will not see him at all. There he goes." 

I looked, but was too late, for he had al- 
ready disappeared. 

" Did you ever hear how 'twas the rabbit 
lost his tail ? " said my companion as we pro- 
ceeded on our walk. 

" No," I replied. " How was it ? " 

" Wal," said Ben in his queer drawl, "it 
was this 'ere way. 

w Once, many years ago, a rabbit and a 
turtle lived in the same swamp. The rabbit 



10 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

was terrible proud an' put on airs. He had 
a fine long tail in them days, an' he carried 
it over his back like a squirrel. It used to 
make the turtle awful jealous to see him an' 
so he thought he'd fix him. One mornin' 
when he met the rabbit he says, ' Hallo ! I 
wonder if you want to run a race with me 
to-day ? ' At this the rabbit snickered and 
leaped over a bush, just to show what he 
could do. 

" ' I run a race with you ? ' he said, scorn- 
fully, i why, if I didn't have but one leg I 
could beat you, you old snail.' 

"'I dare you to try it,' said the turtle 
hotly. 

" l Name the distance, the starting place, 
and the forfeit,' returned the rabbit, 
proudly, 'and we will see about your fine 
boasting.' 

"'Well,' said the turtle, 'we will run 
through the pasture to the mowing, through 
the farmer's turnip patch, twice and back 
again.' 

" ' Agreed,' said the rabbit. 



A TEACHER OF WOODCRAFT \\ 

" ' And this will be the forfeit/ said the 
turtle. ' If you win, you may bite my tail 
off, and if I win I shall bite your tail off. 5 

" The rabbit laughed loudly at this. ' Why, 
friend Turtle,' he cried, 'you can't steer 
yourself in the water without a tail. How 
queer you will look,' and without more ado, 
he was off, running like the wind. 

" The turtle waddled after him, smiling 
broadly, for he well knew if he lost the race 
that he could draw his tail into his shell and 
the rabbit could not bite it off, although he 
tried a week. But this was not the whole of 
his plan. It took him a long time to go 
through the pasture to the mowing and 
when he got there he saw the rabbit busily 
eating turnips in the farmer's lot. This was 
what he had expected, so he went quietly on 
his way, taking care not to disturb the cot- 
ton-tail. 

" Well, Mr. Turtle just made his short legs 
wiggle, and before the rabbit knew it he had 
lost the race. He came flying back through 
the pasture as though the dogs were after 



12 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

him, but it warn't no use, for there was the 
turtle waitin' for him at the brook. 

' ' The rabbit teased terrible not to have his 
tail nipped off, but he had plagued the 
Turtle so much in the past that it warn't no 
use, so the Turtle nipped off his tail at one 
bite. And rabbits hain't ever had tails since." 

" Is that a real true story ? " I asked 
when Old Ben had finished, for I had never 
heard anything of the kind, and was suspi- 
cious that Ben had made it up for the occa- 
sion. 

"Mebbe it is, an' mebbe it ain't," an- 
swered the old man. " There's lots uv lies 
that air true in this world, an' vicy verse. 
Mebbe it war an allergory, or mebbe more 
properly speaking, it wuz a tail. " 

While Ben had been telling me the story 
of how the rabbit lost his tail, we had been 
sitting on an old moss-covered log, just such 
as abound in the forest, he whittling and I 
chewing gum, that he had previously dug for 
me with the large pocketknife that he al- 
ways carried. 



A TEACHER OF WOODCRAFT 13 

"Wal," he said, when the story was fin- 
ished, "I've got this cane done an' I guess 
we had better be moving, for I have gut 
several things to show you." 

The cane which Ben had made for me was 
cut from a maple sapling. He had cut rings 
about it on the lower end and peeled off the 
bark between the cuts so it gave it a striped 
effect, while at the top he had made a whistle. 

" That cane ain't good for much ter walk 
with, but it looks sort uv pretty, an' you can 
blow the whistle when we git out of the 
woods. 

" Now, if I can, I am a goin' to show you 
one of the sights uv these here woods, an' 
that is a cock partridge, drummin'. But it is 
mighty hard to get near um, an' you are 
such a heavy stepper maybe we can't do it. 
I heared one a drummin' a long ways off 
when we wuz a sittin' on the log. I guess I 
know where his log is. Now you follow me. 
We can go along fast enough until we get 
within ten or fifteen rods uv the log, an' then 
we will have to be careful." 



14 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

We trudged along for several moments 
before we heard anything that sounded to 
me like a cock partridge drumming, but fi- 
nally I heard it: slow at first but soon grow- 
ing faster and faster, until it was one long 
roll like thunder. 

"I spose even you could hear that," whis- 
pered Old Ben when it had ceased. " Now 
we'll stop and stand perfectly still until he 
begins again, and then we will go as far as 
we can while he is drummin'. You see he is 
making so much noise then that he can't 
hear us ; but he will listen between times, so 
be careful." 

We waited some time for the old cock to 
drum and I was afraid he had stopped, when 
he began again. The moment he started to 
drum we began to creep up on him, and had 
made twenty or thirty feet by the time he 
had ceased. 

This we did several times, each time draw- 
ing nearer and nearer to the log, until the 
drumming sounded almost like thunder. 
Each time when the partridge stopped we 




HE STOOD ERECT, LIKE A SOLDIER ON DRESS PARADE, 



A TEACHER OF WOODCRAFT 15 

would crouch behind a tree trunk, and wait 
patiently for him to begin again. 

As we got nearer to him, Old Ben kept 
motioning me to be quiet and not to step 
on dry twigs or rolling stones. 

" You see he is almost the same as on the 
ground, an' gets the sound easy," he whis- 
pered. 

By this time I was all excitement, and my 
heart was beating like a trip-hammer. 

When he began again, we hurried a few 
steps forward to the top of a little rise, and 
lay flat upon the ground, and hardly dared 
to draw breath until he began again. 

At the first beat of the partridge's wings 
Ben clutched me by the shoulder, and we 
both stood up and peered between two trees 
into a little ravine that the rising ground 
had hidden from us before. 

There upon an old log in a little opening 
was Mr. Partridge, looking as proud as 
though he owned the whole woods. He stood 
erect, like a soldier on dress parade and his 
ruffs were distended. Slowly his wings rose, 



16 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

until they were as high as his back, and then 
they descended like lightning, but faster and 
faster they fell until the eye could no longer 
see them and he looked like a great round 
bunch of feathers about the size of a half- 
bushel basket. 

As the martial roll of the cock neared the 
close we dropped to the ground and lay still, 
not daring to move or breathe. It was a long 
time before he drummed again, and I began 
to fear that he had got tired of it and gone 
off. But presently there came the first loud 
thump of his wings. 

We stood up again and had a splendid 
sight of this wary bird, sounding his drum 
call, — a sight which few people ever see. 

As he neared the finish we again dropped 
to the ground. 

" My," I exclaimed, drawing a deep breath 
and speaking aloud in the excitement of the 
moment, " ain't he a bouncer when he is 
drumming." The words had scarcely died 
upon my lips, when there was a roar of wings 
beyond the old log, and we caught a glimpse 



A TEACHER OF WOODCRAFT 17 

of the cock, speeding away like an express 
train. 

" There, you hev done it," said Ben in dis- 
gust. " You will hev ter learn not to go a 
shoutin' around when you are in the woods 
with me or I'll leave you to home," and the 
old man looked grimly down at me. 

" I didn't mean ter," I said, this time 
speaking in a whisper. 

Ben laughed. " It won't do no good ter be 
a whispering now, an' you might as well talk 
out loud. He's more'n a mile away by this 
time." 

" Won't he come back ? " I asked, greatly 
disappointed with the news. 

" Come back? I guess not," said Ben scorn- 
fully. " He is the shyest bird there is, an' 
when he knows there are two great lubbers 
like us a snookin' round his log he won't 
come back until he knows the coast is clear. 
He won't drum any more here to-day, an' 
mebbe not to-morrow, for they are terrible 
suspicious." 

" What makes him ? " I asked. 

2 



IS STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

" Wal," said Ben, " lots of things, includin' 
you an' me. Besides men, there are hawks, 
owls, weasels, cats, foxes, wildcats ; them air 
a few of the things that make him wary. 

" Now I hey gut just one thing more to 
show you air then we will go home. Mebbe 
I can't find what I want. I discovered urn 
the other day, an' mebbe their ma has moved 
them." 

" Moved what V % I asked. 

"Wait an' you will see,'' said Ben, and 
he led the way through the woods, going at 
his long lope that I could scarcely follow. 

" We hain't gut to be careful now, for we 
will hev ter skeer the ma away eff ore we can 
see am. See that old black stump ahead ! w 
asked Ben when we had gone some distance. 

" Yes,'' I replied. 

u W T al," said my guide, " you keep your 
eyes on that an' let me know if you see any- 
thing." 

I stumbled along, not looking where I was 
stepping, for my eyes were riveted on the 
stump. 



A TEACHER OF WOODCRAFT 19 

Presently a rabbit hopped out from under 
the stump and along the path a few steps, and 
then stood still, just as the other had done. 
But as we came nearer the rabbit sprang 
into the bushes and was gone. 

" That's their ma," said Ben ; " ef she 
hain't moved them they are under this 
stump." 

Ben put his arm in a hole near the ground, 
and after feeling about for a moment, 
brought out the cutest little white pink -nosed 
chap you ever saw. The only thing that 
would tell you it was a rabbit was its long 
ears. Its eyes were not open yet, and its little 
pink nose twitched as I held it, while it made 
a tiny noise, half way between a grunt and a 
squeak. 

" My, ain't he pretty," I said, devouring 
the baby rabbit with my eyes ; " let's take him 
home." 

" Not much," said Ben, giving me one of 
his severe looks. "How do you think you 
would like it when we get home to find that 
a big animal from one of the planets had been 



20 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

at the house and carried off the baby ? It's 
bad enough for us to be poking about scare- 
in' um without stealing the babies into the 
bargain. The mother will probably move 
um, now they have been disturbed the second 
time. I found um the other day and thought 
you would like to see um. But it won't do 
you any good to come here again, for the ma 
will move um to-night." 

We fished out two more baby rabbits, and 
after admiring them to our hearts' content, 
put them back and started for home. 

" I guess that is sights enough for one day," 
said Ben. " We hev been pretty fortunate. 
We might hev tried a whole season before 
we saw that partridge drum. I was more 
than forty years old before I ever saw one 
drumming. And that is only the second or 
third litter of rabbits that I have ever dis- 
covered, so you see you are lucky to-day." 

I thanked Old Ben the best I knew how to, 
but he only said, "Tut, tut, I don't want no 
thanks, but I wanted you to know that these 
things aren't hangin' on every bush in the 



A TEACHER OF WOODCRAFT 21 

woods. You hev to be patient and careful 
and love all the little animals and at last you 
may find out something of urn and how they 
live. Some day we will go again an' mebbe 
see more strange things, who knows." 

By this time we had got out into the pas- 
ture again, and we soon turned into a cow- 
path that led to the bars. 

" Always makes me feel rested and good- 
natured to be out in the woods," continued 
Ben. "I think it is because we get nearer to 
God in the woods than anywhere-else. God 
is strength and rest for us all." 



CHAPTER II 

OLD RINGTAIL'S WATERLOO 

When Old Ben first brought Ringtail to me, 
he was a fuzzy bit of a coon kitten about 
the size of a chipmunk, or perhaps a little 
larger. He was of a dirty gray color, rotund 
in shape, and as near as we could estimate, 
about three weeks old. He probably had his 
eyes open to the bright light and the strange 
world some three or four days when I got 
him. 

Ben said that coon kittens were slower in 
getting their eyes open than any other kind 
of kittens, as some of them were blind for 
nearly three weeks, while domestic kittens 
and puppies got their sight in about ten days. 
My new pet was not shapely, but resembled 
a ball of fuzz more than a would-be coon. 

He did not make any sound when he was 

22 



OLD RINGTAIL'S WATERLOO 23 

small except to grunt contentedly when he 
was full, and to cry when hungry, very much 
as kittens or puppies would. 

We had a hard time teaching him to drink 
milk, and in fact he nearly starved before he 
learned. 

Several times we despaired of getting him 
to drink, and he might have gone the way 
of many a wild thing that man undertakes 
to domesticate, had we not hit upon the 
plan of giving him his milk from a small 
oil can, squirting it into his mouth. 

Ben took me to the woods one day, and 
showed me where he had found the burrow 
of the coons. It was under the roots of a 
big birch that overhung a brook. The bank 
had shelved off into the water, leaving a small 
cave under the roots of the tree, and here the 
coons had made themselves a fine burrow, 
lining it with dry grass and leaves. It was 
sheltered, warm and dry, and near to the 
water, of which a coon is fond. He is a 
clumsy sort of a fisherman also, and this is 
one reason why he likes to be near a brook. 



24 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

He is no match for the otter in this sport, 
and he does not live in the water as the otter 
does, but he likes to paddle in it and occa- 
sionally knock a sleepy sucker out of the 
water with his paw. This was to be seen 
from the fishbones that were scattered around 
the burrow. The burrow must have been 
an old one, for there were last year's corn- 
cobs and other evidences of long occupancy. 
But this snug home was now quite vacant, 
and had been for some time. " It was be- 
cause I took one of the babies," explained 
Ben. " These wild critters will rarely stay 
in a burrow after it has been robbed, and 
birds do not like to build in a tree where they 
have had bad luck the year before. If they 
do they will change the position of the nest." 

When Ringtail got large enough to enjoy 
the outside world, I made a wire-netting fence 
around the big maple in the yard, about 
twenty feet from the trunk, and let him play 
in the tree or run in his little yard, as best 
pleased him. 

He soon made a burrow of his own under 



OLD RINGTAIL'S WATERLOO 25 

the root of the tree, and was very much at 
home. 

Even while small he would climb to great 
heights in the tree, and I fully expected to 
see him come tumbling down and dash his 
brains out on a root, for the coon is a clumsy 
fellow compared with a squirrel, and, while a 
good climber, he is not built for that exclu- 
sively, as the squirrel is. But I do not know 
that my new pet would have been hurt had 
he fallen, for he was very fat, and his fur 
would have acted as a cushion. 

We did not call him Ringtail at first, as 
the rings about his tail and eyes were not 
plain enough then to suggest the name, but 
they came out early in the summer, and by 
the fall were very marked. 

This history may, like ancient Gaul, be 
divided into three parts, that of Little Ring- 
tail, the baby coon, Young Ringtail the mis- 
chief-maker, and old Ringtail, the renegade 
and thief. 

It was on sweet corn that Ringtail first 
made his start towards being the monster 



26 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

coon that he finally became. He would eat 
several ears in a day, gnawing the kernels 
off, and sucking out all the sweetness in the 
cob. He did not like the corn as well boiled 
as raw, so we threw his into the yard, when 
it came from the garden, usually with the 
husk on, for it was fun to see him husk it. 
He would hold the ear down with his paw, 
and starting the husk at the top would strip 
it off with a sudden jerk of his head. 

Eingtail was also fond of fish. In fact fish 
was one of his passions, and we got a head 
for him as regularly as we bought fish. 

I do not know whether he could distinguish 
between mackerel and shad heads, and trout, 
or whether he preferred trout as coming from 
his native brook, but I took it very hard of 
him, when one day he fished a fine string of 
brook trout out of a pail where I had left them 
in some water and carried them under the 
house. They were still on the string, and 
he held the end of the willow switch in his 
mouth, and of course the fish came along. 
No amount of coaxing would prevail upon 



OLD RINGTAIL'S WATERLOO 27 

him to bring out the trout, but he did return 
the stringer after he had eaten them. 
Perhaps it was an invitation to go to the 
brook and get more for him. But this was 
when he got to be Ringtail the mischief- 
maker, and had the full run of the premises. 

He was on good terms with most of the 
domestic animals. A dog, a cat, some kit- 
tens, some chickens, and a coon frequently 
took their breakfast from the same dish, 
without quarreling more than one would 
expect. 

Eingtail always took pains to eat on the 
opposite side of the plate from the dog, and 
they occasionally exchanged snarls, and 
showed teeth, and once I rescued the coon, 
when he was still young, from a premature 
grave ; but these things always happen, and 
on the whole he took very good care of him- 
self. He was very jealous, though, of an old 
woodchuck that we had partly tamed, who 
used to come to the door for a crust of bread. 
If the coon was about when Chucky appeared 
he usually sent him back into his hole at the 



28 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

top of his speed. The woodchuck always 
gave a whistle of defiance as he dove into his 
burrow, and once underground he wheeled 
about and invited Mr. Coon to come and see 
what a good set of teeth he had, but the coon 
always refused the invitation. 

Early in August I cut a large hole in the 
wire netting that framed the coon's yard, and 
let him run where he pleased, at the same 
time leaving his yard and burrow to flee to 
in time of peril. 

From the very first day that I gave him 
the run of the premises began the history of 
Eingtail the mischief-maker. When we 
went into the garden that forenoon to pick 
corn, we found that some one had been there 
before us, and helped himself in a peculiar 
manner. There were several stalks partly 
down, as though they had been recently bent 
to the ground. The ears on these stalks 
were either partly or wholly eaten. Besides 
this, a few stalks had been lopped over just 
for fun. At first we did not think who the 
marauder was, but the second day we 



OLD RINGTAIL'S WATERLOO 29 

caught him in the act. He would rear on 
his hind legs, and, catching a stalk under 
his forearm, press it to the ground, and hold 
it down while he ate the ear, much as a 
boy would hold down a bush while picking 
the fruit. 

After that nothing was quite safe from 
that prying, pointed nose and those inquisi- 
tive paws, and although he made all kinds of 
trouble, he was so ingenious, and so full of 
pranks and capers, that it afforded us con- 
siderable amusement, as well as annoyance. 

Besides picking corn when he pleased, he 
poked about the roots of the beets to see how 
they grew, occasionally gnawing into one 
to discover if it was ripe. Some of the 
squashes he nipped from their stems just for 
fun, and later on in the season he gnawed 
holes in the sides of many pumpkins, and 
scooped out the seeds with his paw and ate 
them, leaving the entire pumpkin to rot or 
dry up. Occasionally he robbed a hen ? s nest, 
breaking a hole in the end of each egg, and 
sucking it as neatly as a boy could have 



30 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

done. Once he investigated a beehive, and 
went away much wiser : he was not badly 
stung, for his thick fur made that impos- 
sible, but two or three bees got in their work 
on his nose, and for a day or two it was a 
sorry sight. But he seemed to know what 
to do for it as well as I would, for he went at 
once to the side of the road and stuck his 
nose into the mud, repeating the operation 
until it was daubed with a fine mud poultice. 
When the poultice got dry and crumbled off 
he renewed it, and soon had the fever re- 
duced. 

Kingtail was a genuine sport, his two kinds 
of game being fish and small birds, which 
he would sometimes eat up, nest and all. 

It was about Thanksgiving time that he 
had his first taste of chicken. It was purely 
an accident, for we had feared letting him 
taste even chicken bones. But after the 
chickens were killed for the Thanksgiving 
pie, he found their heads near the chop- 
ping block, and ate them, and poked about in 
the chips for more heads. 



OLD RINGTAIL'S WATERLOO 31 

A few days after Eingtail brought a hen 
and laid her on the front doorstep. Her 
head was nipped off as clean as one would 
have done it with an axe. By his manner he 
seemed to say, ' i here is another for the pot ; 
I have fixed her just as you did the others." 

We did not want any more of King's help, 
and so put a collar on him and tied him 
up. It was a hard trial for him being 
halter-broken, and he nearly strangled dur- 
ing several fits of pulling, but finally learned 
that it was useless. 

About this time there came on a very cold 
snap and a hard snowstorm. The snow came 
in the night, and when we went to feed King 
the next morning he was gone, leaving an 
empty collar. 

We saw nothing of him for two months, 
and thought he had returned to his native 
woods, and found shelter in a hollow tree, 
when one warm day on going into the cellar, 
who should we see sitting on the potato bin 
but Ring, looking sleepy and stupid. We 
let him alone, and the next day he was gone, 



32 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

but investigation revealed him rolled up in a 
ball in a ditch leading from the cellar to the 
outside world. The cellar being on a side hill 
was drained by this ditch. King had slipped 
his collar and crawled into the outer end of 
the ditch the night of the cold spell and the 
snowstorm. In the morning he had prob- 
ably found the entrance blocked by snow, 
and had concluded it was time to hibernate, 
and had gone to sleep. The warm winter 
thaw had awakened him and he had come 
into the cellar to investigate. When Eing- 
tail appeared in the spring, about the middle 
of March, he was not the sleek, well-groomed 
coon that had curled up for his long nap in 
the autumn. He was lean and lank, and his 
coat was dull and rusty. 

He was a little shy at first, and it took him 
a day or two to get fully waked up, but 
after a little he remembered that we were 
his friends and showed us the same confi- 
dence he had the year before. 

There was no sweet corn or garden stuff 
for Ringtail in the early spring, but he did 



OLD RINGTAIL'S WATERLOO 33 

very well on some sweet winter apples. He 
was also partial to turnips, and he remem- 
bered the fish- cart, and got his usual fish 
head. He also ate ground fish which we 
used for fertilizer, and its odor clung to him 
for days afterwards. 

But the summer season, with new sweet 
corn and sweet apples, was his time for 
growth, and during the second summer he 
nearly doubled in size. He had also gotten to 
be quite a scrapper, and it was a good dog 
that cared to take a bout with him. 

It was early in September of the second 
year that Ringtail made his first depredation 
on the henhouse, and it was his love for 
chicken together with his extravagant waste- 
fulness in killing, that finally led to his down- 
fall. 

I am confident that he knew the chickens 
were not intended for him, and he had no 
right with them, for the night that he killed 
a rooster and two hens he took to the woods, 
and was never seen about the premises by 
day again. I occasionally saw him in the 
3 



34 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

fields, but he took good care not to let me get 
in reach, and paid little heed to my calling. 
He seemed always to be watching me out of 
one eye, and his countenance plainly said, " I 
know it would not be well for me to have 
you catch me, so we will live apart here- 
after." 

Two nights after his first thieving, he 
visited the henhouse again, this time kill- 
ing four fowls, only one of which he carried 
away. 

I had raised a fancy strain of Wyan- 
dottes, intending to show them at the fair, 
which was to be in a week or two. But this 
last stroke of Eingtail's spoiled my coop, as 
it left me only two or three ragged pullets 
and a rooster that was off color. If he had 
been content with killing ordinary hens, it 
would not have been so bad, but when he 
picked out thoroughbreds, it was too much 
to bear. 

That noon Ben happened along, and I told 
him my grief. 

" The ole rascal," he said, sympathetically, 



OLD RINGTAILS WATERLOO 35 

" I thought it would come to this all along ; 
you can't keep lambs and lions in the same 
cage, not without you keep puttin' in fresh 
lambs. I'll bring over a trap to-night and 
we'll catch him." 

Accordingly we set the trap, with all of Old 
Ben's trapper's ingenuity, but no coon could 
we catch. Nearly every morning we found 
evidences that the coon had been about ; 
sometimes he killed a chicken, more fre- 
quently he was satisfied with less flagrant 
mischief, but he never got into our trap. 

He was so used to the premises that any- 
thing out of the ordinary attracted his at- 
tention, and put him on his guard. It may 
be only my imagination, but it seemed to 
me that he purposely tormented us, and 
defied us to catch him. 

We put up with being robbed and torment- 
ed in this way for about a month, then Ben 
went to a neighboring village for a celebrated 
coon dog, and we planned a hunt that should 
either end the career of this marauder, or 
else scare him out of the country. 



36 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

The dog was a beautiful black and tan 
fox-hound, who was equally good as a coon 
dog, which is not usually the case. I remem- 
ber well fondling his ears and petting him 
before we started out. 

It was about the first of October. Corn 
was cut and in the shook. The apples were 
picked, and nearly all the fall work well 
along. 

We went at once to the cornfield, as the 
most likely place in which to get track of the 
coon. 

" If you want to know whether a coon has 
been in a cornfield or not," said Ben, " just go 
round it with the dog, keep him on a string 
while you do it, and then you will be sure of 
it." 

At the further side of the field the hound 
got excited, and we let him go. 

He at once took the trail and went off into 
the pasture, barking at every jump. Ben and 
I followed as fast as we could. 

In less than three minutes the dog was 
barking up a tree in the pasture near by. 



OLD RINGTAIL'S WATERLOO 37 

We went to the spot and found him at the 
foot of the big maple. 

" Might as well have treed him up a 
meetin' house steeple," said Ben when he 
saw the tree. " We might climb the steeple 
or chop the church down, but this tree is out 
of the question. He has beat us to-night, 
and we might as well go home." 

The big maple, as it was called, was a 
landmark for half a mile around. It was 
five or six feet at the butt, and ran up sixty 
feet without a limb. 

After considering for a moment, I saw the 
wisdom of Ben's conclusions, and reluctantly 
turned my steps homeward. I had wanted 
to try a pair of climbers that Ben had gotten 
the year before from a lumberman, but this 
tree was too much for a beginner. 

The next night we struck the trail as be- 
fore, but after the dog had been running 
five minutes the wary coon holed in a ledge 
where it was impossible to get him. 

" Done us again," said Ben, after making a 
thorough examination of the ledge ; " might 



38 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

as well try to dig John Bull out of Giber- 
alter." 

The third night Ringtail was treed again in 
the big maple. 

Ben said that we might possibly shoot him 
in the daytime if I would watch the tree for 
the rest of the night. So, lantern in hand, I 
took my position at the foot of the tree, and 
Ben went home, the dog soon following. 

I was very sleepy, but was determined to 
stick it out, and not fall asleep. For a while 
the hooting and screeching of a large owl 
kept me awake, but presently I began to 
doze. Then I thought I heard something 
scratching, as though descending the tree. 

I looked up and was horrified to see a 
monstrous black shape that I took to be a 
bear slowly descending. My first thought 
was of flight, but when I tried to rise my 
knees knocked together so that I could not 
stand. So there I sat while the bear de- 
scended on the further side of the tree. Then 
I awoke just in time to see the black-ringed 
brush of a coon disappearing on the outer 




I SAW THE BLACK-RINGED BRUSH OF A COON. 



OLD RINGTAIL'S WATERLOO 39 

edge of the light that my lantern shed into 
the gloom. 

There was no use watching an empty tree, 
so I went home. Ben made all kind of fun 
of me the next day when he came to shoot 
the coon. 

" I guess that old Ringtail has about sized 
us up," he said. " I never see nothin' like 
him for a coon. Might as well try to catch a 
firefly ; but we will get him yet. You know 
the old sayin', the deer that goes too often to 
the lick finally meets the hunter." 

By the time that we had treed and holed 
the coon half a dozen times, and always in 
some inaccessible place, Ringtail got tired 
of our little game, and took matters into his 
own hands, in a way that startled even so 
experienced a woodsman as Ben. 

We had found the track in the cornfield as 
usual, and the dog had been running about 
five minutes, when we heard a terrific snarl- 
ing down in the meadow. 

We made all haste to the spot, feeling sure 
that the coon had at last been brought to bay. 



4:0 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

The hound had evidently been at the ditch 
on the edge of the swamp, so we went along 
beside it, poking away the swale with a stick. 
" Mighty curus where that dog has gone so 
sudden," said Ben. "I should think we'd 
hear something of him." There was about 
a foot of water in the ditch, and some of the 
way it was completely covered with grass. 

We had explored four or five rods, when 
we suddenly came upon the hound lying in 
the bottom of the ditch, kicking and gasping 
in the last agonies of drowning. 

"Gosh all hemlock," ejaculated Ben, at 
the sight of the kicking dog, " ef that don't 
beat me ! Ill bet that coon has done for the 
dog." We pulled the sleek hound out of the 
water, and a moment later he died before 
our very eyes. 

There was a savage bite in the back of his 
neck, but it was not enough to cause death. 

Of course we were not certain how it hap- 
pened, but Ben said that the coon was proba- 
bly hard pressed and jumped into the ditch 
and the hound after him. 



OLD RINGTAIL'S WATERLOO 41 

The coon had then apparently caught the 
dog by the nape of the neck and thrust him 
under water. Or he might have fallen into 
the ditch with the coon on top of him. The 
only fact that we were sure of was the dead 
dog before us. 

We made a sorry spectacle as we carried 
the hound home between us on a pole, which 
we stuck through his collar. 

This ended our coon hunting for about a 
week, but Ben finally got Danny, a big coon 
dog owned by a neighbor, and we began 
again. 

" Mebbe old Ringtail will eat up Danny," 
said Ben the first night that we started 
out with the new dog, "but he will hev a 
big mouthful if he does." 

I do not know whether the coon thought 
he had gone too far and that we would make 
it hot for him, but for several nights he lay 
low, and we could not start him at all. 

Night after night we tried, but could not 
get track of him. Danny soon got disgusted 
with the whole performance, and finally 



42 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

concluded that we were merely taking some 
evening walks, and did not scour the country 
as thoroughly as he should have done. 

To break the monotony of coon hunting 
without getting any coons, we built a camp- 
fire each night and roasted some sweet corn 
that had been sown for fodder and was just 
getting ripe. This and some fall apples made 
a very pleasant camp-fire supper. 

One night when we had been hunting with 
Danny for about a week, we struck into the 
sugar orchard, where there was a fine growth 
of old maples and no underbrush. 

We had gone but a few rods when we were 
startled by a furious onset from Danny, and 
answering snarls that were so fast and 
furious that my hair fairly stood on end with 
fright. 

Ben hurried forward, and, fearing to be left 
in the dark, I followed. 

Not five rods away we came upon the scene 
of the battle, and it made a spectral picture 
in the tall aisles of the maple forest. 

There at the foot of a great tree, with his 



OLD RINGTAIL'S WATERLOO 43 

back against the trunk, standing well for- 
ward on his toes, the fur raised, his teeth 
bared and gleaming white by the lantern 
light, was Ringtail, the renegade, taken un- 
awares and at last brought to bay. 

Over against him, but three or four feet 
away, was Danny, with hackles up and fangs 
bared. Every now and then he advanced on 
the coon and although he was twice the size 
of his wild antagonist, he dared not walk 
into that grinning muzzle. 

I thought that Ringtail cast a reproachful 
look at me as he sat there on his guard, 
fighting his last fight, but it was probably 
only my conscience. But I could see the dog 
collar around his neck that I had placed there? 
and I could not help thinking how pretty he 
had been as a kitten, and a dozen of his 
comical pranks flashed through my mind 
in those brief seconds. 

" Shake him up, Danny," cried Ben, swing- 
ing the club in his hand to attract the coon's 
attention, and Danny advanced a step nearer 
and the big coon slunk back closer to the tree. 



44 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

Then suddenly the coon's head shot out and 
his teeth clicked like a steel trap. Danny 
drew back and licked his chops, from which 
the blood was trickling. 

" Go it, Eingtail ! " I shouted, forgetting 
for the moment which side I was on. " You 
can lick him, give him another." 

But his star paled and went out almost as 
I spoke, for Danny suddenly sprang forward, 
and with a cleverness and intelligence that I 
have never seen equaled, caught the coon's 
long tail, that lay upon the ground, in his 
teeth. With a sudden spring backward he 
brought the coon sprawling on his back and 
off his guard, with his throat open to the 
attack. Even then the old renegade died 
game, for he left several long scratches on 
the hound's belly, and bit him in the cheek 
as he closed upon his throat. 

But it had been Danny's stratagem rather 
than his pluck that won the battle. 

Danny was jubilant, and danced about us 
as we walked home. Ben also was elated, 
for he was a philosopher and knew that we 



OLD RINGTAIL'S WATERLOO 45 

could not keep our chickens if the coon was 
allowed to live, but my own feelings were a 
sorry mixture of triumph and regret. 

I had hunted Ringtail relentlessly, but at 
the last moment would have been glad to 
have seen him escape up the tree. 

If he had been some one's else pet, it would 
have been different. But I finally steeled 
my heart with the thought of the dead hound 
that Eingtail had killed, and of the coonskin 
cap and mittens that I would wear the com- 
ing winter. 



CHAPTER III 

BOOKS IN RUNNING BROOKS 

One Saturday afternoon in midsummer, 
when the air was sweet with the breath of 
new-mown hay, and the roadways and lanes 
were gay with buttercups and golden-rod, 
Old Ben came strolling into the yard, carry- 
ing two of his famous ironwood fishing poles 
on his shoulder. 

Each of these home-made rods was rigged 
with the celebrated horse-hair line that Old 
Ben alone knew how to make, and with hook 
and sinkers. 

" Hello, Harry," cried my friend cheerily, 
as soon as I appeared, " let's go fishing." 

I needed no second invitation, and rushed 
to the shed for a fork with which to dig 
worms. 

" Where are you goin' to dig um ? " asked 

Ben, when I returned with the fork. 

46 



BOOKS IN RUNNING BROOKS 47 

" In the sink drain/' I replied ; " there are 
lots of fine ones there." 

" That's not the place at all/' said the old 
fisherman promptly, " worms from the drain 
will be soft and light colored. What we 
want is the black tough fellows that won't 
break when you put them on." 

We soon found a place by the roadside 
where the worms were black and tough, and 
filled our boxes. 

"You hain't got no breathing places in 
u the top of your bait-box, Harry," said Ben ; 
your worms will all smother." 

I had not thought of this, but he soon rem- 
edied the difficulty by punching holes in 
the tin box with a nail and a stone. He then 
made me the proudest boy in town by pre- 
senting me with the extra pole he had 
brought along, and we at once started for 
the sweet little meadow brook that had always 
been my delight. 

Old Ben went at a long lope and I trotted 
by his side. 

"There is a wise old chap named Shake- 



48 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

speare, " he said. " I dunno much about him, 
but I heared one thing that he said once, that 
Ihev alius remembered : ' There's books in 
runnin' brooks, sermons in stones, an' good 
in everything.' Now, that's mighty true. 
Brooks are like people, they begin small and 
grow a little every day of their journey. 
Sometimes they run through the alder bushes 
where it is dark, and then they murmur like 
they were sorrowful. Then they run down 
pebbly slopes, where it is sunny, an you can 
fairly hear um laugh." 

My heart beat like a trip-hammer as we 
neared the brook, but Ben, as he would say, 
" was as cool as a cucumber." He showed 
me how to loop the worm on, so it would 
look natural, then told me to go ahead and 
he would follow behind an' ketch the little 
ones that I left. 

I threw into the first likely hole, and was 
waiting for a bite when I heard old Ben talk- 
ing. " Hello, you ole green-back, you had 
better let that hook alone or you'll be pricked, 
it ain't intended for you, any way." 



BOOKS IN RUNNING BROOKS 49 

" Who are you talking to ? " I asked. 

"An old green bull-frog," he answered. 
" He looks so comical, settin' under a lily-pad, 
winking and blinking. Know what becomes 
of frogs in the winter, Harry ? " 

"No," I said, " what does?" 

" Why they jest freeze up, stiff as pokers. 
I often find um under the mould when I 
am settin' mink traps. Snakes does the same 
way. I found one once when I was choppin'. 
He was in a hollow birch, frozen stiff as a 
hickory. I carried him home and set him up 
in the corner, an' in half an hour he was 
crawling round on the floor lively as you 
please. I didn't want no snakes for ev'ry- 
day company, so I put him out doors and let 
him friz up again, an' sleep until spring. 
Pull him in Harry, pull him in." 

I had been interested in Ben's story of the 

snake and had not noticed that my line was 

zigzagging around the pool. I twitched 

upon the pole with all my might and the 

trout went several rods back into the 

meadow. 
4 



50 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

Ben laughed. " Any one would think you 
wuz throwin' apples on a stick by the way 
you twitch. Jest give your wrist a turn like 
this," and with an easy motion Ben hooked 
a fine trout and lifted him out upon the 
grass. 

I went back into the meadow to look for 
my trout, but could not find it. " Eight by 
that leetle willow bush," shouted Ben ; 
"you alius want to mark a thing down by 
some bush or brake an' then you can find 
it." 

I looked where he indicated and found my 
trout. 

I wondered more and more as the after- 
noon went by how Old Ben could see so many 
things that were hidden from me. The wood- 
cock borings and the mink tracks in the mud, 
the frogs and the lizards, and the beautiful 
bunches of lily-pads and water grass. Noth- 
ing escaped his notice, and in everything 
he found beauty. 

" It's jest hevin' on your woodsman's 
specks," he said. "You will hev a fine pair 



BOOKS IN RUNNING BROOKS 51 

in a few years if you keep on an' sorter take 
notice of things." 

In the big pool by the old log I discovered 
a fine large trout, headed up stream, lazily 
fanning the water with his fins. Cautiously 
I approached him, but no allurement would 
cause him to bite. 

Old Ben got several kinds of bait for me, 
including a grasshopper, a cricket, and a 
grub, but the old trout was wary. Finally 
Ben chuckled and said, "I guess we'll fix 
him now; I'll go up stream and rile the water, 
an' you stay here. When the muddy water 
floats down by you a spell, throw in your 
worm an' let it go down with it." 

I did as instructed, and to my great aston- 
ishment the cunning fish took my bait with 
a suddenness that nearly twitched the pole 
away from me, and a second later I landed 
him fairly. 

" Now, Harry," said my friend, when I had 
done dancing about, " why did he bite when 
I riled the water ? " This question was too 
much for me and I had to give it up. 



52 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

"Wal," said Ben, " it is this way. That 
ole trout probably knew what a hook and 
line was as well as you or I, but when he saw 
the rile coming down stream he thought to 
himself, the bank has caved in, and here 
comes a fine worm that has fallen in with it. 
I'll take it." 

" Don't you see how natural that was? 
You can't fool these little beauties very often, 
an' the only way to do it is in one of nater's 
own ways." 

Just where the little brook gurgled 
through the wall between the mowing and 
the pasture and then hid in the spruce woods 
we were treated to one of those pleasant 
surprises that makes the study of woodcraft 
so fascinating. 

I was in the lead and was blundering 
along in my accustomed fashion, when, just 
as I mounted a stone wall, a mother par- 
tridge, closely followed by ten or a dozen 
chicks came scurrying out from under the 
spruces. The small partridges looked for all 
the world like brown Leghorn chickens just 




A MOTHER PARTRIDGE CLOSELY FOLLOWED BY HER CHICKS. 



BOOKS IN RUNNING BROOKS 53 

hatched, and the old partridge ruffled her 
wings, very much as a hen would do. But 
instead of clucking she cried "quit, quit, 
quit," and seemed in great distress. 

With the instincts of a young savage T 
gave chase, and then the mother partridge 
acted very strangely. 

She fluttered down upon the ground in 
front of me almost within hand's reach, and 
then I saw that one of her legs was injured, 
for she limped and fluttered along in a pain- 
ful manner. Again and again I reached for 
her, but in some unaccountable manner she 
would slip under a bush or into a brake and 
just elude my grasp. 

As I dove under a low spruce after her I 
heard old Ben shout, " Go it, Harry, I will 
bet on the partridge." 

He proved to be a good prophet, for the 
next time I reached for the wary mother she 
shot out from the underbrush with a roar of 
wings and the speed of a rifle bullet. Then 
there was a flash of fleeting wings and feath- 
ers, the friendly arms of the Forest closed 



54 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

behind her and she was gone. I peered into 
the tree tops and under the low hanging 
branches, but no partridge was to be seen. 
Then I heard smothered laughter from Old 
Ben, and looking around saw him sitting 
upon a knoll, holding his sides and chuckling. 

" You orter hed salt, Harry, you orter hed 
salt," said the old man, when he had laughed 
sufficiently at my expense. 

"What for ?" I asked, considerably nettled 
that he should be laughing at me. 

" Why, to put on her tail, then you could 
have caught her, Harry." 

" Well," I replied, " I almost got her with- 
out any salt. Didn't you see me nearly get 
my hand on her ? Didn't you notice how 
lame she was ? One of her legs was almost 
broken." 

At this Ben laughed again, but I could see 
nothing to laugh at. "You are dead easy, 
Harry," he said, when his mirth had sub- 
sided. "It reminds me of the old proverb, 
' Big head, little wit,' but I chased a lame 
mother partridge myself once when I was a 



BOOKS IN RUNNING BROOKS 55 

boy, and I suppose I ought not to laugh at 
you." 

"Why, wasn't she lame?" I asked, at 
last beginning to get a little light upon the 
mystery. 

"Acted sorter done up when she lit out 
for unknown parts, didn't she ? " asked my 
tormentor provokingly. " Went about sixty 
miles an hour, as near as I could cackerlate. 
All she wanted was to get you away from 
her chicks so they could hide, and that was 
why she fluttered along and made such a 
fuss." My eyes opened wide with astonish- 
ment. " You see," continued my tormentor, 
" there was more brains in her little butter- 
nut head than there was in your great curly 
pate, an' she fooled you completely, and that's 
the way 'tis half the time in the woods. 
When man, who thinks that God gave 
him all the brains there was on hand at the 
time, undertakes to outwit a fox, or a par- 
tridge, or even a crow, he finds out his mis- 
take, an' gits some of the conceit taken out 
of him." 



56 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

" Where do you suppose all the young 
partridges have gone ? " I asked as we made 
our way back to the spot where we had first 
seen them. 

"They hev hid," said Ben. "When the 
mother went away she said, ' Now you hide 
and stay hid until I come back,' and they 
would if she was gone half a day." 

We poked about in the grass and weeds, 
but could see nothing of them. Just as we 
had given up the search old Ben pointed to a 
yellow brake near my feet. I looked down 
and saw one of the chicks with his head 
tucked under the brake, but with his body 
in plain sight. I reached down quickly and 
closed my hand over him, but only pressed 
my own empty palm, for at the same instant 
there was a rustle in the grass and the young 
partridge had gone as though the ground 
had opened and swallowed him. 

Ben answered my look of astonishment 
with a chuckle. " Might as well try to catch 
a humming-bird," he said. " They are quick 
as greased lightning, and the cunningest bird 



BOOKS IN RUNNING BROOKS 57 

in the forest. They are one of the things you 
cannot tame. Wild they are born and wild 
they die." 

We went back to the meadow and hid be- 
hind the wall where there was a convenient 
peep-hole that permitted us to see without 
being seen. 

After about fifteen minutes the old part- 
ridge came sailing back over the tree-tops 
and alighted on the ground near where we 
had last seen her brood. 

She had departed with a roar of wings, but 
she came back as noiseless as a swallow. 

After reconnoitering for a moment, seeing 
that the coast was clear, she began calling in 
a low cr-re-kk, cr-re-ekk. Then one by one 
the chicks came up out of the grass and 
brakes, but from just where I could not tell. 
I saw the exact hiding-place of only one, and 
he came from a bunch of grass. When she 
had satisfied herself that all were there, she 
led them away into the deep woods, bristling 
and calling to them as she went. 

When the purple shadows began to steal 



58 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

from bush and brake, and the swallows flew 
low o'er the meadow lands, we wound up our 
fishing tackle and started for home, which by 
this time was nearly a mile away. 

I had nine small brook trout on a willow 
switch, while the count revealed nineteen 
upon old Ben's forked stick. 

" I don't see what made them bite your 
hook so much better than they did mine," I 
said ruefully, feasting my eyes upon Ben's 
fine string of speckled beauties. 

"Wal, Harry," he said soothingly, "I 
reckon it is this way. You see the big fellers 
are wary and don't bite in a hurry. When 
you come along they sorter think it over, 
and by the time I get along, they are ready 
to bite. 

"Here is something I found in the brook," 
and Ben took a small object about the size 
of a silver dollar from his pocket and placed 
it in my hand. 

It was a cute little baby turtle, with a 
beautifully marked shell and an inquisitive 
head which he poked out at me. 



BOOKS IN RUNNING BROOKS 59 

" Where did you find him ? " I asked. " I 
didn't see anything that looked like a turtle." 

"No, probably not," said Ben. "You 
would have thought he was a small stone, or 
a brown leaf, anything but a turtle. But 
just where I found him there was the print 
of one of your bare feet, an' I reckon you 
nearly stepped on him. Did you ever hear 
how the turtle got his shell, Harry?" 

" No," I said, all excitement, for I thought 
I scented one of Old Ben's home-made wood- 
craft stories ; " tell me." 

"It ain't much of a story," said my com- 
panion, "but it was this way. Once, years 
and years ago, long before Christopher 
Columbus discovered America, or George 
chopped down the cherry tree, there lived a 
turtle, way off in the island of Madagascar, 
or some such place, I don't remember just 
where, it was so long ago. 

"The turtle didn't have any shell then, 
only a sorter tough hide, and he was a terrible 
awkward lookin' feller, all legs an' tail an' 
loose jinted. 



60 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

" He used to like to bask in the sunshine on 
the bank, just as he does now, but sometimes 
the flies would bite him, or his back would 
get blistered by the heat. 

"He got to thinkin' it over one day, an' 
thought what a fine thing it would be to have 
a little house that one could carry around all 
the time to keep the sun and the flies off, and 
to go into when an enemy came along. The 
more he thought about it the better he liked 
it. But he couldn't seem ter find anything 
that would do for a house. 

" Wal, one day Mr. Turtle was under a 
cocoanut tree taking a nap, when down fell 
a large cocoanut that struck on a rock an' 
broke in two. 

" The turtle woke up and looked around, 
and there was his house all ready for him. 

" Why, he nearly laughed out loud when 
he saw it. He set to work and gnawed 
out the meat and made holes in the sides of 
the cocoanut shell for his legs, head and tail, 
and the house was ready. But how in the 
world was he to keep it on, especially the 



BOOKS IN RUNNING BROOKS 61 

lower half ? The roof would stay on all 
right, if he was careful, but the under side 
was another matter. 

" Wal, the turtle thought very hard, and 
then he remembered the gum-stickum tree. 
So he went and nipped off some bark and 
got some gum stickum and smeared both 
parts of the shell over inside and the house 
was ready for him. 

" First he laid on his back in the top part 
of the house and it stuck nicely, then he laid 
on his belly in the bottom part, and the shell 
fitted together fine, and after a few weeks it 
grew together and you could not see where 
it had been cracked. 

" Then he polished it up by rubbing on rocks 
in the river, and the water helped to make 
it smooth and get off the fuzz, 'til you would 
not know that it had been made out of a co- 
coanut shell at all. 

" Finally he got his friend, the lobster, who 
was a kind of artist, to paint the shell over 
green and mottled, and the house was done. 

"Here we are at the gate, Harry. Keep 



62 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

the little turtle a few days in a tub of water 
and watch him, but take him back to the 
brook in a week or so, for that is his home, 
and we all love our home." 



CHAPTER IV 

THE MISCHIEF-MAKER. 

The Mischief-Maker sat on the limb of an 
old apple-tree barking and scolding away as 
though the whole world had been turned up- 
side down, and there was no one in the world 
to right it but himself. It was little he could 
do to put things right, for he was a mischief- 
maker, and more than likely to turn things 
wrong side out himself. 

If I were to enumerate all the wicked 
pranks that he had done since the daffodils 
awoke from their winter sleep, the mere 
mention of each would fill the entire length 
of this story, and tire you to death. A few 
of the most flagrant of his pranks will serve 
to show you the turn of his mind and his in- 
genuity in small deviltry. 

The first bluebird had barely got here, 
63 



64 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

" shifting his light load of song from post 
to post/' as Lowell says, when the Mischief- 
Maker discovered a pair of gray squirrels 
living in an isolated first-growth maple, that 
was old and hollow, and afforded them a fine 
shelter. Their winter's store was nearly 
gone, but there were still some choice hickory 
nuts left, and a good supply of chestnuts ; not 
to mention three ears of corn which were 
tucked away at the bottom of the store in 
the autumn, and had not yet been eaten. 

Usually the Mischief-Maker would have 
set up a terrible barking and scolding on dis- 
covering a pair of gray squirrels, but think- 
ing that this would alarm them and set them 
on their guard he stole quietly away, and 
with more forethought than he usually 
showed, thought out a plan for their undoing. 

Every day thereafter he took up a position 
in the top of a butternut tree near the house, 
where he could watch the maple. One day 
when he saw the two gray-coated cousins go 
away for a day's visit in the deep woods, he 
called two of his red imps, and the three red 



THE MISCHIEF-MAKER 65 

squirrels proceeded to the big maple. Then 
the Mischief-Maker scurried up to the hole 
in the maple, which was the home of the 
gravers, and dropped down the remainder 
of their winter store, while his two compan- 
ions proceeded to hide it in every conceiv- 
able crack and cranny. There was no system 
in their mischief either, and a great deal of 
the hard-earned store they were never able 
to find again, so that it did no one any 
good. 

When the grayers returned, late in the 
afternoon, they were heartbroken to find 
their store entirely gone, but there was great 
glee in the apple orchard, where three red 
squirrels made merry over their joke. 

The arbutus had pushed up through the 
dead leaves and grass and was gladdening 
the pasture land with its sweet, shy beauty 
when the Mischief-Maker discovered the re- 
mains of Chippy's winter store at the root of 
an old beech. Then this heartless freebooter 
robbed him just as cruelly as he had done the 

grayers. 

5 



66 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

For a while after this he could rob no more, 
as the winter store was all gone, and bird- 
nesting time had not yet come. But as soon 
as the birds began their building his sharp 
eyes were upon them. You must not im- 
agine though that he had been unemployed 
during these two or three weeks. 

He had been carrying corn from the garret 
and scattering it about in the near-by fields, 
that he might dine on it when hungry. 

He did not really need the corn, as there 
were plenty of last year's butternuts under 
the tree near the house, and up in the orchard 
were rotten apples, from which he delighted 
in gnawing the seeds. But the corn was 
carefully hung up in the garret, being kept 
for seed, and thus gave an added relish to 
steal it. The people who lived in the large 
farmhouse were always good to the red Mis- 
chief-Maker, but that made no difference, as 
he had no conscience to which one could 
appeal. 

Although he kept rather quiet during nest- 
building time, yet his bright eyes were tak- 



THE MISCHIEF-MAKER 67 

ing in all that was going on in the trees, and 
many a nest he marked for his own. 

He never disturbed a nest while the male 
bird was about, for he was afraid of having 
his eyes pecked out. Secretly he was a great 
coward, which fact he well concealed by 
making a loud noise on all occasions. When 
the female bird had been left alone he would 
steal quietly up, and frighten her from the 
nest, then he would eat the eggs and beat a 
hasty retreat, so when the male bird came 
flying swiftly back, alarmed by the cries of 
his mate, he could find no one to charge with 
robbing his nest. Or if he did see the Mis- 
chief -Maker the next day sitting on the wall, 
scolding as usual, that small scalawag had 
such an innocent look, and was so abused 
when Eobin accused him of the theft, that 
he concluded it was some other thief, and 
begged the Mischief-Maker's pardon, while 
that rogue snickered behind his paw. 

Best of all, the red squirrel loved quietly 
to slip up when both birds were away from 
the nest and do his wicked work. If he was 



68 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

not hungry, he would merely bite into the 
eggs, or drop them down to the ground to 
break them. 

Once he had stolen up very quietly to in- 
vestigate a large, strange-looking nest that 
his prying eyes had discovered in the top of 
a hemlock. It was not until he was almost 
at the brim of the nest that he discovered 
two big winking, blinking eyes looking at 
him. These eyes reminded him of those of 
the cat into whose paws he had rushed one 
day while fleeing from a boy with a sling 
shot. He had escaped from the cat by dodging 
and twisting, but he never forgot the look of 
those eyes. 

This time he was too frightened to run. 
So he merely loosed his hold on the limb, and 
fell to the ground. This alone saved his life, 
for the owl came flopping after him, almost 
as soon as he struck the ground. But the 
fall aroused him, and he escaped under the 
roots of the tree, where he stayed for half a 
day. 

The Mischief-Maker had been thinking 



THE MISCHIEF-MAKER 69 

while he had been sitting in the old sweet- 
apple tree. 

It had been a long time since his teeth had 
cracked a nut, and they fairly ached for some- 
thing hard to crunch. The old nuts had been 
softened by the wet, until they no longer 
had that hard, crisp feel that he loved. He 
must have something to crack. 

Then a very wicked thought, probably the 
worst one that he had ever entertained, came 
into his head, and he made the orchard fair- 
ly ring with scolding and barking. It would 
be such sport. His tail twitched, his head 
bobbed, and his bright eyes snapped. But 
the old birds might peck him, for they would 
be terribly angry. " Chatter — chee — chirr- 
rr-r — ." "Let them," and with a whisk of 
his tail and a flash of red along the trunk 
of the apple tree, he was gone on his wicked 
errand. 

A moment later he might have been seen 
running along the stone wall, by the high- 
way. Directly opposite a big maple, a few 
rods down the road, he stopped and peered 



70 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

up into its branches, cocking his head on one 
side and then on the other. He could see 
the nest plainly from where he sat. The 
male bird was not at home, for he would 
have been singing at this time of day, had 
he been there. He did not think the female 
was at home either, for he could usually see 
her head above the top of the nest from his 
perch on the wall. 

A moment the Mischief -Maker hesitated, 
and then flashed across the road in a series 
of quick jumps and scurried up the tree. 
" Was it this limb or the one above?" A 
tree never looks the same up in the branches 
as it does from the ground. " yes, there 
it is ! " And in another second he was stand- 
ing over the nest, looking straight down 
into the open mouths of four small robins, 
who heard the noise, and thought that 
their parents had returned with worms or 
grubs. 

The Mischief -Maker singled out the largest 
of the young robins, and dragged him over 
the edge of the nest. The poor little fellow 



THE MISCHIEF-MAKER 71 

wriggled and squirmed but made no sound. 
Then this hard-hearted marauder cracked his 
skull with his sharp teeth, just as he would 
crack a nut, and ate his brain. He dropped 
the little, brainless, dead robin to the ground, 
and reached for another. 

Where were the old birds ? Would nothing 
stay this wanton murderer ? 

Away up in the sky, almost in the sun it 
seemed, was a motionless silver speck. It 
was so high up that it looked like a speck of 
dust, and one would have to gaze long to 
see it. 

The second fledgling was dragged to the 
side of the nest and brained like the first, and 
then dropped quivering to the ground. 

The silver speck in the sky was growing 
larger, though it seemed to be motionless. 
But it was not motionless. The fact that it 
grew steadily larger should tell you that. 
It was coming straight down for the tree, 
and no runaway train ever coasted down the 
side of a mountain on gleaming rails as 
swiftly as these silver-gray wings bore this 



72 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

wild coaster down through space to its 
quarry. 

Like the fall of a meteor, making a beau- 
tiful oblique line against the warm summer 
sky it came. 

It was no avenging power, or spurred 
knight, that was coming to the rescue. It 
was merely an accident that the hawk saw 
the squirrel cross the road, and later located 
him on the limb by the nest. 

Just as the third fledgling was dragged to 
the edge of the nest to be butchered, there 
was a rush of air like a sudden gust of wind. 
Then two broad wings struck the maple 
leaves like the fall of hailstones. The twigs 
parted obedient to the terrible rush, and 
steely talons were wrapped about the mur- 
derer caught in the act. 

There was a frightened chirp and a squeak 
or two, and the Mischief-Maker hung limp 
in the strong claws of the hawk. His red 
coat dripped blood as he was borne away 
to a maple stub in the pasture, where the 
same fate was meted out to him that a 



THE MISCHIEF-MAKER ?3 

moment before he was inflicting upon the 
fledglings. 

Thus goes the life in the busy fields and 
woods. 

If a snake or a squirrel rob the bird's nest, 
yet the eyes of the hawk or the owl are upon 
them. There is nothing so small or insig- 
nificant that something else does not prey 
upon it, and nothing so strong or fleet of foot, 
that it does not have its enemies, and live 
eternally upon guard. 



CHAPTER V 

A TENDER MOTHER 

Old Ben discovered it. He always dis- 
covered everything that was going on in 
the field and woods, and never seemed to be 
looking for anything out of the ordinary 
either. But somehow his eyes could single 
out fur and feathers among the brakes and 
bushes, when mine saw nothing but the bare 
leaves. 

Sometimes I would think I had stolen a 
march on him, and would whisper excitedly, 
" Ben, see that chipmunk." 

Then he would look ruefully down at me, 
and, pursing up his mouth, would say in his 
quizzical manner : 

" Harry, I can't make out whether you are 

first cousin to the bat or tjie owl, but it is 

certin' one of um. Why that chippy and I 

74 




THERE WAS A FRIGHTENED CHIRP AND A SQUEAK OR TWO 



A TENDER MOTHER 75 

hev been winking back and forth to each 
other for half an hour. Mor'n five minutes 
ago he asked me, with a little jerk of his 
head, is he stone blind, an' I replied with a 
shake, only partly." 

It was just so when we were on the mill 
pond. Ben could see fish down in the pickerel 
grass and lily-pads, when I saw only green 
stuff and dancing ripples. 

" Don't see any bull- frogs do you, over in 
that bunch of lily-pads ? " he would some- 
times say, just to try me. 

Then I would strain my eyes, and perhaps 
after five minutes would discover a couple 
of old green fathers of the pond, tucked in 
under the pads, but Ben had seen them at 
the first glance. 

The particular thing that Ben discovered 
this time interested me more than anything 
we had ever seen together before, for it was 
nothing more or less than a litter of foxes. 

He had seen one of the old foxes go into 
the burrow on the side of a hill, late in March, 
and had guessed the truth. 



76 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

He said nothing to me about it, though, 
until about the first of May, when he had 
seen the mother fox with three little ones 
playing about the hole on a sunny afternoon. 
When he had made sure that his first sur- 
mise was correct, he took me to watch this 
most interesting family. 

We had to be very careful, for the fox is 
wary, and his powers of perception are of 
the keenest ; there are few wild things that 
can scent man further than a fox. Many 
a pleasant afternoon we had to give up a 
visit to the burrow because the wind was in 
the wrong direction. If the old fox should 
scent us too often she would either move her 
family, or else not bring them out except by 
moonlight. 

The burrow was on a sidehill, and we used 
to observe it from across a little valley. 
We would come out on the top of the op- 
posite hill, keeping in the spruces as long as 
we could, then crawl on our hands and knees 
to a pyramid-shaped spruce that stood alone 
out in the pasture, a few rods nearer the 



A TENDER MOTHER 77 

burrow. We always kept this spruce be- 
tween us and the burrow, and so got a very 
good position, where we could see and not be 
seen. Then if the wind was all right, there 
was little danger of our being discovered. 

Another thing that helped us was a good 
sized brook that ran through the valley be- 
tween us and the foxes, and its murmuring 
covered up any noise we might accidentally 
make. 

We had an old army field-glass, that I usu- 
ally used, but Ben said he could see well 
enough with his naked eye. The little 
foxes could just waddle about when we first 
saw them, and Ben said their mother brought 
them out more to get a sun-bath and a whiff 
of fresh air than to exercise, for they were too 
small to do much but roll and tumble about. 
But it was surprising how their activity grew 
from day to day. In a month after our first 
visit to them, they would play like kittens. 
They were lighter colored than the mother, 
being a sort of reddish yellow, and having no 
black, not even on the tip of the tail. 



78 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

When they were hungry their wild mother 
would lie down upon the grass and the three 
lively youngsters would stretch out in a row, 
and get their dinner or supper. 

One day the mother went down to the 
river and caught a frog which she carried 
back to the mouth of the burrow. Soon the 
three imps appeared, and she gave them the 
frog to play with. 

Then they rolled and tumbled over each 
other, all scrambling for the poor frog. 
When he got away from them, the mother 
went after him and brought him back, and 
they tossed and tumbled and mauled him 
about until life left him, but after that he 
had no attraction for them. 

Later on she brought them more frogs, 
mice, small snakes, and occasionally a bird, 
all of whom fared hard in the clutches of the 
young foxes. After a week or two at this 
fierce play they became veritable little sav- 
ages, and w T ould tear anything that came in 
their way to bits in short order. 

About this time began a sort of lesson or 




SHE GAVE THEM THE FROG TO PLAY WITH. 



A TENDER MOTHER 79 

drill in getting into the hole in a hurry at 
any suspicious noise, or at least that was 
what we supposed it meant. The old fox 
would leave the youngsters playing about 
the burrow and go off into the bushes. 
They would be tumbling about, frisking and 
frolicking like kittens, when suddenly the 
old fox would appear. Then these young 
reynards would put for the hole as though 
all the hounds in the county were after 
them. Again and again they repeated this 
operation, until the slightest rustle in the 
grass caused them to disappear as though by 
magic. 

After this the mother would leave them 
for an hour at a time and go away to hunt. 
We rarely saw the male fox. Only once or 
twice he came around towards dark and 
entered the burrow. 

He was a large fellow, of a deeper and 
richer red than usual, with dark markings. 
Ben said he was probably a cross-fox. One 
afternoon about the first of June, when the 
small foxes had got to be quite scrappers, we 



80 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

heard the mother coughing and sneezing, at 
which Ben said " Distemper. It is rather 
late in the spring to have it, but that is what 
is the matter." We had been having a long 
rainy spell, and the month was cold, which 
probably accounted for it. 

The next time we saw them the old fox 
looked quite sick. Her brush was down and 
she had a dejected air, and came several 
times to the river to drink, which Ben said 
meant that she had fever, but the small foxes 
were nowhere to be seen. 

" They are probably sick too/' said Ben, 
which proved to be the case. 

We were quite anxious to know how it 
fared with the fox family, so we went the 
next afternoon. For half an hour we could 
see nothing of either the small foxes or their 
mother, but finally she came out, bringing 
one of the little ones in her mouth. 

She placed him on the pile of dirt at the 
mouth of the burrow. He did not seem in- 
clined to run about, but curled up in a small 
bunch and lay quiet. Then she began lick- 



A TENDER MOTHER 81 

ing him, and walking uneasily about him, 
and finally laid down in front of him, and 
tried to get him to nurse, but he did not care 
for any dinner, at which the mother seemed 
worried. Then she took him in her mouth, 
and paced up and down, much as a mother 
would walk about with a child, trying to 
hush it to sleep. Every now and again she 
would lay the little fox down and lick it, and 
mother it. 

When she had mothered it for half an 
hour in this way she took it back into the 
hole, and we saw no more of her that day. 

The next day we went to the fox family 
again, in whose fortunes we now felt a deep 
concern. 

Again the mother fox brought out a sick 
little one, but we could not tell whether it 
was the one we had seen the day before or 
not. This time it hung limp from her jaws, 
and when she laid it on the ground it re- 
mained quiet, a pathetic little bunch of 
fur. 

The distress of this wild mother over the 
6 



82 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

sickness of its little one was pitiful to see, 
and, thoughtless boy that I was, it made a 
deep impression on me. 

She would trot around it, and lick it, and 
poke it gently with her nose. Then she 
would go off a short distance and stand and 
watch it, as though she thought it was feign- 
ing sickness, and would be all right if she 
was not so anxious. But she could not 
remain long away, and each time she would 
return and fall to caressing it. Finally as a 
last resort she shook it gently in her mouth, 
and then fearing that she had been too rough, 
licked and mothered it, as though asking 
forgiveness. 

But seeing that all these remedies did no 
good she brought it to the brook and laying 
it down on the grass, dipped her paw in the 
water and gently sprinkled its head. Not 
getting water fast enough this way, she filled 
her mouth, and let it drip upon the little 
fox. 

Finally, seeing that all effort was useless, 
she lifted it gently and dropped it into the 



A TENDER MOTHER 83 

brook. This we took to mean that she at 
last understood it was dead. 

The next afternoon she brought out an- 
other little kit-fox and went through the 
same operations with him that she had done 
with the first, for he too was dead. This 
time it did not take so long for her to sat- 
isfy herself about it. This baby she did not 
put in the brook, but hid it in a hole between 
two stones, where she probably thought it 
would be safer than out in plain sight. 

We stayed later than usual that afternoon, 
and so, by a mere accident, saw the departure 
of the fox family from their ill-fated bur- 
row. 

It was just getting dusk, and a star or two 
had pricked through the sky to see what we 
were doing so late under the spreading 
spruce. 

I had put up the field- glass when Ben called 
my attention to the burrow. The male fox 
was coming out, carrying the remaining little 
fox in his mouth. 

It was alive, for it kicked and squirmed, 



84 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

protesting violently against being carried in 
that way. 

The old fox evidently had a good plan in 
his head, for he looked cautiously about, 
then he trotted off into the bushes, still 
carrying the youngster, and we never saw 
either again. 

A few minutes after the mother fox came 
out, and trotted dejectedly after her lord. 

" Wal, I guess that is the end of this story," 
said Ben as she disappeared in the bushes. 
" They wouldn't have taken the little fox 
without they were going somewhere to stay. 
They probably know of another burrow that 
they are going to for a change. Perhaps 
they think this one is hoodooed." 

As we tramped home in the pleasant twi- 
light, Ben regaled me with many incidents 
of fox-hunting, which he had been very fond 
of when a young man. Some of these experi- 
ences I have remembered and will record for 
you, but many of them I have forgotten. 

" Foxes is mighty interesting," said the 
old man, talking in his usual quiet vein. 



A TENDER MOTHER 85 

" They are more interesting, and harder to 
find out about than almost any other animal 
in New England. 

" There ain't no other animal in these parts 
that does as much hard thinking and plan- 
ning as a fox. Why, the didos that a fox 
will go through to throw a dog off his track 
would do credit to a Sioux Injun. Some- 
times he will make several small circles and 
snarl the track up, and then give a big jump 
on to a rock, or an old log. While the dog 
is trying to unravel the snarl in the track, 
the scent on the rock gets cold and the dog 
can't follow it at all. 

"Then he will keep crossing a brook, or if 
it is winter he will run in a sled road, and 
step in the horses' tracks. When he sees a 
convenient stone wall by the roadside he 
will run upon it for a few rods and then 
jump off at some unexpected angle. 

" Sometimes he will back-track until he 
gets within twenty or thirty rods of the dog. 
Then he will give a big jump, to one side, 
and the dog will follow the double track until 



86 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

it suddenly ends. After searching a while 
he finally concludes that the fox has taken 
wings and flown away over the tree-tops. 

" Cutest thing I ever saw in my life, 
though, an' one I wouldn't have believed if I 
hadn't seen it, happened before my own dog, 
Bugle. (Called him that because he had 
such a fine ringing voice.) 

"One day he started a fox and ran him 
into a cow pasture. I see the fox a comin' 
with the dog a good long piece behind. 

"In about the middle of the pasture there 
was a sheep feedin', a sort of cosset that ran 
with the cows. Wal, when that fox saw the 
sheep, he just put for her. I thought he 
was mad. They goes mad sometimes, but 
he had no intention of harmin' the cosset. 
When he got alongside he just jumped on 
her back, and rode across the pasture. Then 
he hopped off and went on his way, rejoicing 
that he had made a break in his track of 
fifty rods. 

" The perplexed howls that old Bugle gave 
when he came out into the pasture and found 



A TENDER MOTHER 87 

the fox track suddenly turned into a sheep 
track was enough to make a horse laugh. 

" I could have taken him over to the other 
side of the lot and put him on the track, but 
I says to myself, 'That fox deserves to live. 
He is smart as folks. And even if we did 
start him agin, he would play some new 
dido on us. We had better let him alone. 5 

" Speakin' of foxes reminds me, Harry. 
Did you ever hear how 'twas, the fox got his 
brush ? " 

" No," I replied. " How was it ? " 

"Wal," said Ben, " it was this 'ere way : 

" Years and years ago " 

"How many years ago ? " I interrupted, in 
my eagerness to be sure of the time. 

" Wal," replied my companion, "I wasn't 
never much of a hand for dates, but I should 
say about halfway between Noah and George 
Washington, maybe a leetle nearer George's 
time, but right along there somewhere, there 
lived an Englishman, or maybe he was a 
Frenchman, or perhaps a German living in 
Patagonia, I don't just recollect which, but 



88 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

this man had a dog — a mighty intelligent, 
reddish-yaller purp, he was, with a pointed 
nose and a long slim tail. 

" The man was a chimbley-sweep, and the 
dog finally got so he used to help his master 
sweep chimbleys. He would take a short 
brush in his mouth, and climb up the chim- 
bley — there was a sorter steps in the chimbley 
in them days — and he would sweep it as slick 
as a pin. Besides that, he used to do lots of 
other things, like watering the flowers in the 
garden, and dust the furniture in the house 
holdin' the brush in his mouth." 

" How did he water the flowers ? " I asked. 

" Why," replied Ben, "his master would 
fill the waterin' pot and he would take the 
handle in his mouth and go about with the 
pot just like folks. 

" Finally the dog got to thinking one day 
that it would be a great saving if he had a 
brush hitched to himself, he had to use one 
so much. He couldn't very well have it 
hitched to his paw, so finally he thought of 
his tail. 



A TENDER MOTHER 89 

"So he went to the upholsterer, and had 
him soak his tail in the glue-pot, and then 
stick it full of hairs until he had the finest 
kind of a brush. 

" Wal, when it got dry he went to sweep- 
ing a chimbley and was surprised to see how 
fine it worked. He would just start and go 
up the chimbley and wag his tail all the way, 
and when he got to the top the chimbley was 
swept. It worked just as well in the garden, 
for all he had to do was to dip his brush in 
the watering-pot and go between two rows 
wagging his tail, and they were both watered. 
In the house it was just as convenient, for 
he would back up to a chair and wag his 
tail a spell and it was dusted better than 
his mistress would have done it; but there 
was one drawback, — the poor dog's tail got 
awful tired, wagging all the time, and when 
night came it was nearly ready to drop off. 

" Wal, things went from bad to worse, 
until finally they told him to go and stand 
by the cradle and keep the flies off the baby 
with his fine brush. He did as he was told, 



90 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

but he was gettin' mighty mad. That night 
he tried to pull out the hairs in his tail, but 
it wasn't no use, that upholsterer had done 
a good job. So when all the family was 
asleep the dog ran away and became a fox 
and lived in the woods all the rest of his 
days. 

" Here is your doorstep, Harry, an' supper 
is waiting. Good-night." 

" Is that a true story, Ben?" I shouted 
after him, as he disappeared down the walk. 
He was too far away to hear my ques- 
tion, but the stars were all winking at me, 
and the moon fairly grinned as she looked 
over the eastern hills ; so I concluded that it 
was just one of old Ben's quaint stories of 
the Wood Folks. 



CHAPTEE VI 

AN AUTUMN RAMBLE 

On the bright day in November when old 
Ben and I took our autumn ramble, the gay- 
garments of the trees were trailing in the 
dust, brought low by frost and rain. There 
was occasionally a rock maple that was more 
hardy or better sheltered than its fellows 
that still wore the crimson robes, but most 
of the garb of the woods rustled under our 
feet with a pleasant sound. It was great 
fun to scuff one's feet as we sauntered along, 
and hear the pleasant rustle, like turning 
the tissue paper pages of nature's great 
book. 

Down in this gray-brown carpet there were 

still leaves of the most flaming crimson, or 

of the brightest yellow, and their brilliancy 

was even more noticeable for the somberness 

of their fellows. 

91 



92 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

But you must not imagine that the day 
was gloomy, for nature had poured out a 
draught of summer sun that had been over- 
looked in the fulness of summertime, and 
the yellow golden sunbeams were full of life 
and warmth. 

The blue- jay in his dazzling livery was fly- 
ing from the cornfield to the deep woods and 
back again, all the time keeping up his noisy 
call. Squirrels were chattering as though 
this had been the one day in all the year, as 
indeed it was for them. They had chipped 
gleefully when the warm spring winds melted 
the snow so they could get at last year's 
beechnuts, and they had chattered like mag- 
pies when the summer brought sweet apples 
and a score of other dainties, but now the 
golden autumn had brought nuts, and they 
fairly shouted their joy from the tree- tops. 
When they were not busy with the nuts, 
either getting their breakfast or laying in a 
store for winter, they chased each other to 
and fro in the trees like boys playing tag. 

" Let's see if we can discover a grayer," 



AN AUTUMN RAMBLE 93 

said Ben as we struck into a tall first-growth 
sugar orchard ; " this is just the country for 
them. They are about as fond of maple 
seeds as they are of nuts." 

We seated ourselves at the foot of a large 
maple, and made what Old Ben called a still 
hunt for a grayer. 

"Now, listen," said the old woodsman, 
" an' let me know if you hear anything sus- 
picious." 

I listened with all my ears and heard many 
things, but did not know what they all 
meant. There was always the soft falling of 
the leaves, and the gentle stirring of the 
nearly naked branches, as they responded to 
the light touch of the wind. Then there was 
the distant calling of crows. There were 
no red squirrels here in the tall maples, and 
Ben told me that if we saw a red squirrel we 
might as well stop looking for the grayer. 
He does not like to inhabit the same grove 
that the noisy, mischievous redder does, for 
that mischief-maker is always playing pranks 
upon him. 



94 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

After a few moments of quiet, listening to 
the many tongues of the woods, Ben said, 
" Harry, there is a grayer in that big spread- 
ing maple with the birch near by it." 

" Have you seen him ? " I asked excitedly. 

"No," replied Ben, "but I know he is 
there." 

" I don't see how you know it if you haven't 
seen him," I replied. 

" Wal, he just sent down a letter say in' he 
wuz up there in the top of the maple. I 
guess you don't know how to read squirrel 
letters. 

" Now you just watch where the sunlight 
falls through that big crotch and tell me 
what you see." 

I did as told, and, in a few seconds, saw a 
maple seed float down at the identical spot 
Ben had indicated. 

" See it, Harry," said my friend excitedly. 
" That maple seed didn't hev enny seed in it, 
it was nothin' only the husk or pod, or what- 
ever you call it. Let's see if we can get a 
glimpse of him." 



AN AUTUMN RAMBLE 95 

So we crept forward like Indians, all the 
time watching the falling maple seeds, and 
after considerable shifting of our position we 
discovered him away in the tip top of the 
tree, nicely balanced upon the end of a 
branch, with his gray brush waving to and 
fro in the breeze. 

"How would you like to be getting an 
early supper in the top of a maple ninety 
feet from the ground ? " asked Ben, poking 
me in the ribs. " Wouldn't you want feet 
like a fly so you could hold on ? " 

After we had seen the grayers get their 
afternoon meal in the tops of the first-growth 
maple, we struck off through the woods, and 
soon came out on a sunny south slope where 
there were chestnut and beech with occa- 
sional scrub spruces in the underbrush, while 
out in the open pasture there were two big 
walnut trees which were known to the boys 
and the squirrels for miles around. 

" I never see nuts uv enny kind," said Ben 
as we began poking under the dead leaves for 
beechnuts, " but it reminds me uv one time 



96 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

when I went beechnuttin' when I wuz a boy. 
Me an' Zeek went, and the nuts wuz awful 
plenty that fall, I never see no such time 
for nuttin'. They were as thick as spatter 
on the ground, and besides the wind had 
blown down a large limb that was chuck full 
on urn, an' we gut our bags and baskets full, 
an' there wuz plenty more to pick. We 
hated to go home as long as it was light an' 
there was still nuts to pick, but we didn't hev 
nuthin' to put them in. Finally, Zeek, who 
was older than I, said, ' Ben, I'll tell you 
what we'll do. You just take off your shirt, 
an' we'll tie up the end of the sleeves an' the 
neck, and it will make a fine bag ? ' 

" ' Let's take yours, Zeek,' I said, ' it will 
hold more than mine.' 

" c No/ said Zeek, ' mine is new ; besides we 
don't want one that will hold more than a 
peck or two, an' yours is just right.' 

"I thought I would be cold, but Zeek 
poohed at me and said I would never do for 
an Injun scout, or a pirate, so I finally con- 
sented. That about the Injun scout an' the 



AN A UTUMN RAMBLE 97 

pirate had great weight with me for that was 
what I had my mind on, them days. Wal, I 
stripped off my shirt, an' we tied up the sleeves 
and the neck with string, and it made a fine 
bag. It was terrible cold, an' my teeth chat- 
tered as though I had the ague, but Zeek 
said I never could bear torture if the Injuns 
ever got me, if I was so silly about bein' 
cold, so I tried not to mind, an' hurried 
around pickin' up nuts to keep warm. 

" Wal, we picked my shirt full, an' just as 
it was gettin' dark, we stole into the garret 
with our nuts, not wishin' the folks to see 
the nuts in my shirt, but I was half froze by 
that time. 

" We found a bag an' emptied the shirt as 
soon as possible, an' I put it on, but such a 
shirt as it was I never want to put on agin. 
You see them beechnut burrs had stuck in 
the woolen until it was completely lined with 
prickers as sharp as needles, that scratched 
me like nettles, particularly when I moved. 

" ' My shirt is all full of prickers, Zeek,' I 
said ; ' it will kill me if I don't take it off.' 
7 



98 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

" ' Keep it on, Bennie,' he said, i an' don't 
say nothin' for the world ; if you do we both 
get a good lickinV 

"' Several times during the evening I 
was tempted to make a confession and 
take a licking rather than wear the shirt 
another minute, but every few minutes 
I caught Zeek's eye, and it always said, 
1 Don't you do it, Ben, don't you do it ! ' 

"You better believe I was glad when it 
came bed-time, an' I got off that shirt. It 
irritated my skin so that mother thought I 
had the chicken-pox, but Zeek and I knew 
better." 

Old Ben and I filled the salt bags that we 
had brought along for the purpose, with 
beechnuts, and some sacks with chestnuts, 
in the burr. 

The woods were full of squirrels that after- 
noon, redders, grayers, and chipmunks, and 
the redders and chippies chattered away in a 
merry manner, but the grayers went soberly 
about their work, keeping as much out of the 
way as possible. 



AN A UTUMN RAMBLE 99 

"Squirrels is like folks/' said Old Ben as 
we plodded home. " There is the redder. 
He is a noisy scatterbrain, never laying up 
anything in a systematic way. Sometimes 
you will find an apple in the crotch of a tree, 
or a few nuts under a stone, but he does not 
lay up any regular store, and the consequence 
is that he often nearly starves in the winter. 
On the other hand the grayer and the chip- 
munk lay up a regular store, just as a thrifty 
man does, and then in the winter, when the 
wind howls and the snow falls, the grayer 
can sit in his hole in the tree and eat his nuts 
and read the paper." 

" Squirrels don't have papers, Ben," I said, 
in surprise. 

" That's so, they don't, Harry, excuse me," 
said the old man, "I forgot ; but they hev 
all gone to school though. They all learn 
in the school uv life, where they learn 
to take care of themselves, and not be eaten 
up by larger creatures, or killed by man. 

" It is sorter queer, but there ain't no other 
critter so universally feared by all animals 

L.ofC. 



100 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

as man. He is worse than hawks, an' weasels 
and foxes all put together. 

" When I wuz a boy, I was jest like all 
boys, a sort uv wild Injun : wanted to kill 
everything that I saw, but as I git older I 
don't care so much about killin', but I like 
ter let things live an' watch um, an' see what 
they are thinkin' about. If you kill an animal 
that is the end on it, an' you can't find out 
anything more about it. 

" There are only four things thai I make a 
pint of killin' when I get a chance, an' those 
are weasels, hawks, rats, and snakes. 

" I spose the Almighty has got some use for 
them too, although I hain't found it out yet. 

" A hawk ain't so bad either, if you get on 
the right side on him. I had one when I 
was a boy, kept him for a pet. I got him 
out of the top of a beech when he was little, 
an' brought him up by hand. He thought 
as much of me as he would have of his 
own mother if he had known her. You hev 
heern tell of falconers. Why that hawk was 
a dandy falcon. He would sit upon my 



AN A UTVMN RAMBLE 101 

shoulder when I went after the cows, an' 
when he spied something, you ought to see 
him put after it. He went after snakes an' 
mice mostly. Why, that hawk would skin a 
snake quicker than you could say Jack 
Eobinson. He'd hold his head down an' 
start the skin at his neck, an' then keep 
rippin' with his claw until the snake was 
skinned neat as a pin, an' wouldn't hev 
knowed hisself if he had looked in a lookin'- 
glass. 

" But finally my hawk went bad. He got 
to catching chickens, an' my brother Zeek 
shot him. 

" I was sorry to lose him, but we had to keep 
the chickens." 



CHAPTER VII 



THE PLOVERS' FIELD-DAY 



One afternoon late in November, when the 
fall winds blew fresh over the fields, and the 
wind-clouds played tag across the blue-gray 
sky, old Ben took me to see what he styled 
the " plovers' field-day." 

The gaiety that we had noted in the attire 
of nature, when we took our autumn ramble, 
had been replaced by a sober gray garb. The 
leaves danced a hornpipe along each pathway. 
All nature seemed to mourn the gay dead 
summer. 

Ben and I drove three or four miles with 

my father's team, and then walked about a 

mile " 'cross lots," to a great barren stretch 

of June grass mowing, known as the plains. 

This sterile land, which only grew June grass 

and brakes, was cut up like a checker-board, 

102 



THE PLOVERS' FIELD-DAY 103 

with stone walls, dividing it into lots of five 
or ten acres. These lots were dotted with 
stone heaps, but even then there were plenty 
of stones left scattered about. 

We had hardly arrived at the plains when 
a plover rose from the nearest stone-heap, 
and flew away to a distant leafless maple. 
"He is just a sentry," said Ben, "but the 
plover don't pay much attention to men 
during their field-day, for all they are so shy 
the rest of the time. He'll tell them that we 
are coming, but they will not mind us if we 
are careful. Wiggle- wings, I call um, see 
how his wings wiggle, especially when he 
rises." 

We could now see plover flying over the 
fields, in small companies of three, five or 
seven, while some groups were even larger. 
They would fly steadily across the field, and 
when they reached the limit of the plains 
would turn in a broad sweep and fly back 
again. They flew as regularly and steadily 
as a flock of geese, until they reached the 
turning point. They usually flew abreast or 



104 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

nearly so, and never straggled along, Indian 
file, as crows are fond of doing. When they 
reached the turning point, one end of the line 
would slow up, slightly, while the outside 
plover struck a bit faster, and the line would 
turn, as cleverly as the maneuvers of a 
squadron. 

Sometimes they would fly fast, as though 
trying their wings, but usually the pace was 
slow and measured, and their turns were in 
broad sweeps, for there was plenty of room in 
the upper air. 

"Near as I can make out," said Ben, " an' 
I hev watched um here for several years, this 
performance is a sorter annual muster, or 
parade, partly to renew old acquaintance, 
but more especially to learn the young birds 
to fly properly, and to gee and haw, a sort of 
getting ready for the long flight south. See 
those three plover coming this way. See how 
much stronger the bird in the middle flies. 
The other two don't half know how to use 
their wings. That is an old bird in the 
middle, and he is teaching the others to fly. 



THE PLOVERS' FIELD-DAY 105 

Sorter putting them through their paces. 
We walked nearly across the plains, and as 
far as the eye could reach in every direction 
there were plover going through the same 
maneuvers. It was for all the world like 
a large body of soldiers, broken up into small 
squads, with a captain or experienced private 
breaking in the raw recruits. 

Later on in the afternoon, the small squads 
seemed to be combining, for fifteen or twenty 
would fly across the fields in a company, 
but with the same regularity and in the same 
measured manner. ' ' That's probably a whole 
regiment," said Ben, as a large flock came in 
sight. " Looks kinder as though they were 
gettin' ready to break camp." We soon 
saw other large companies, wheeling and 
circling in the same manner, and it was 
certain that the formation of regiments had 
begun. 

When the sun was about half an hour 
high, with a continuous whistling of wings, 
a regiment rose in unison, to about the same 
height. We did not hear any one say " Fall 



106 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

in," but there were the ranks, a little ragged, 
but symmetrical. 

Then probably some old plover who had led 
the van before, gave the command, " For- 
ward, fly," for with a steady, even stroke they 
swept away into the blue-gray distance. The 
space where they had formed had barely 
cleared, when a second company rose in the 
same manner, formed, wheeled and swept 
after the first. So it went on for fifteen 
minutes. There seemed to be millions of 
them, and our eyes ached with watching. 

At last the solid ranks passed, and then 
came a few stragglers, bringing up the rear, 
and the parade was over. 

"Due southeast," said Ben, as we saw 
the last company fade away. "They are 
headed straight for New York city, but it 
probably means Jersey or Delaware. 

"Mighty cur'us, though, how well they 
know the heavens. I wonder whether it is 
because they are up so high, that they can see 
everything for half a State and can keep 
their course by the lakes and rivers. That 




PLOVER FLYING OVER THE FIELDS IN SMALL COMPANIES. 



THE PLOVERS' FIELD-DAY 107 

would look reasonable, only lots of birds fly- 
by night, and hit it just as well. Seems to be 
a sort of instinct, or maybe every one of 
them has got a compass in his head, or his 
gizzard. 

" Geese fly in a harrow shape, with one 
strong- winged old gander to fly at the point 
and break the wind. When he gets tired, 
he says 'next gent, 5 and some other gander 
takes his place. It is a great sight, though, 
to see a large flock of geese swing through 
the sky. They do it so strong and steady. 

" Speakin' of flocks reminds me of a time 
when I was a boy an' we hed a great flight 
of pigeons. One morning we got up and 
found something was the matter with the 
sun. Just shining sorter dimmed, a good 
deal of the time it was dark enough for 
candles. Looked as though the sun was a 
goin' out. But there wan't nothin' the 
matter with the sun. It was just a flight of 
pigeons, that completely covered the heavens 
as far as we could see. It was just so off an' 
on for hours, and when they had all gone, we 



108 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

felt as relieved as though it had been a two- 
day's rain, and the sun had just appeared. 
That was a flight worth seeing but it hain't 
never happened since, and that was sixty 
years ago." 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE GREAT CIRCUS CAT 

The fitful gleam of two score lanterns, 
following at regular intervals, a few rods 
apart, was trailing along a country road. 
The moon and stars were hidden by a soft 
spring haze, that enveloped the travelers, 
wrapping all things in its gray mantle. 

By the light of each lantern one could see 
revolving wheels, and the massive outlines 
of circus vans. Here and there a light, 
stronger than the rest, revealed the outline 
of the driver sitting wrapped in his great 
oilskin coat, guiding the team through the 
dense darkness. 

Even had it not been for the lanterns, one 

would have guessed that a large caravan 

was passing, from the snapping and creaking 

of the axles, and a score of other small sounds 
109 



110 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

that always attend the moving of heavy- 
freight. 

Most of the drivers were alert, watching 
the bushes by the roadside that they might 
guide their teams as near between the two 
dark outlines as possible. 

Others in the middle of the procession 
dozed, feeling quite sure that the horses, so 
long accustomed to the life, would trail after 
the lantern in front of them, and keep the 
road. 

Two or three of the drivers neither watched 
the team which they were supposed to drive, 
or the road, but were wholly engrossed with 
black bottles on the seat beside them. 

Such was the condition of Big Ireland, as 
he was called by the hands, the driver of the 
great van, containing the panther and jaguar. 

Presently the teams in the distance began 
rumbling over a short iron bridge. One 
could have guessed this, for the sounds of 
the heavy wheels on the plank came nearer 
and nearer, giving the impression that the 
bridge was traveling towards one, for there 



THE GREAT CIRCUS CAT m 

was nothing in this dense darkness by which 
to gauge the movements of the team. 

When the van carrying the big cats struck 
the bridge, which was narrow, the team had 
hauled over to the left, and the shutters of 
the cage barely cleared the strong iron pillar 
that stood guard at the corner of the bridge. 

Although his faculties were numbed by 
drink, Big Ireland felt that something was 
wrong, and instinctively pulled upon the 
right rein, or what would have been the right 
rein had they not been crossed. At the same 
time he spoke sharply to the horses. Then 
there was a grating, grinding sound, and the 
drunken driver reached for his whip. Twice 
it fell upon the frightened horses, and the 
grating and grinding gave place to cracking 
and breaking. Then there was a hideous 
din, in which the squealing and kicking of 
horses, the breaking of strong wood and rip- 
ping of bars, and the snarling of frightened, 
infuriated cats could be distinctly heard. 

When the drivers from the teams ahead 
and behind hurried to the scene, they found 



112 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

one horse down, his legs through the lattice- 
work in the side of the bridge. The two left 
wheels of the wagon had gone through an 
opening between the railing and the floor of 
the bridge, and were wedged in clear to the 
hub, while the forward side of the van had 
been literally gutted. 

Their first thought was of Chieftain, the 
great circus cat, but the flash of their lanterns 
into the cage showed that he was gone. 

When the van driven by Big Ireland struck 
the bridge, Chieftain the panther was lying 
curled up in one corner of the cage asleep. 
His first instinct on being so rudely awak- 
ened was to slink away into the furthest cor- 
ner from the commotion. But w T hen he 
heard the tearing of the bars that had so 
long stifled him, he raised his head and sniffed 
the air eagerly. He could not see that the 
side of the cage had been ripped open, but 
something told him that it was so. For a 
breath of freedom blew through the open 
bars that only a wild creature, for years 
held captive, could have discerned. 



THE GREAT CIRCUS CAT H3 

He stretched his great paw forward and 
felt the opening. Then cautiously slipped 
through to the railing of the bridge, where 
one great spring carried him into the dark- 
ness, and night folded her arms about him, 
as though to protect this wild creature from 
pursuit, while the fields and the meadows 
cried " Come, you are ours, we will feed and 
water you." 

At first the panther, so long cramped in 
his cage, crept cautiously through the dark- 
ness. His eyes so long used to artificial light, 
winked and blinked strangely. But by de- 
grees the pupils dilated to their utmost and 
drank in whatever light the gloom contained, 
and with cat-like stealth he crept along the 
pasture. 

Now and then the great cat would stop to 
roll like a kitten upon the grass, or stretch 
its limbs. Once it gave two or three great 
bounds, just to feel those sturdy limbs spurn 
the green earth. 

After about two hours, a gray streak ap- 
peared in the east, and birds began to twitter 
8 



114 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

in the tree-tops. Then the panther entered a 
wood. As it had been captured when a kitten, 
it had never seen anything like this before, 
bat it was fresh and cool, and besides it was 
dark and there were plenty of places to hide, 
so the great cat was well pleased with his new 
discovery, and thereafter kept to the woods. 

It was about a week after the accident on 
the bridge, and the escape of Chieftain from 
the van, that Stubby Daggit was going for the 
cows, just as he had done for the last six or 
seven years. 

There would seem to be little relation be- 
tween Stubby and the cows, and the great 
circus cat, for that dread animal had es- 
caped some twenty-five miles from the vil- 
lage where Stubby lived. Though the woods 
had been scoured for days, nothing could be 
found of him. So every one had concluded 
that the panther by some inborn instinct was 
working his way northward toward the 
wilderness that its kind had frequented ever 
since the days of the red man. 

Stubby was not handsome. You will 



THE GREAT CIRCUS CAT 115 

guess this when I tell you that his other 
nickname was " Freckles " ; but he had an 
honest countenance, and any hoy in the vil- 
lage would tell you that he was clear grit, 
from the top of his tow-head, to the bottom 
of his bare brown feet. 

The cows gave him considerable trouble 
this night, for he had to go to the further 
end of the pasture, into a maple grove for 
them. They acted rather strangely, too, he 
thought ; for they started uneasily every 
time he struck at the weeds by the side of 
the path with his birch rod. 

Just at the edge of the woods was a spread- 
ing maple that overhang the path, and here 
they jammed up in a bunch, refusing to go 
under the tree. 

"Whey, there, what are you doing?" 
cried Stubby, switching the hind cows with 
his birch. These pressed forward, and the 
cows ahead broke into a trot, going under 
the maple at a good pace. 

Then a long, lithe figure dropped from the 
tree, like a thunderbolt from a cloudless sky, 



116 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

and with a snarl that froze the blood in 
Stubby's veins, dug its claws in the sides of 
the foremost cow, while its teeth were buried 
in her neck. Stubby's first thought was of 
the escaped panther. 

With a frenzied bellow of pain and fright, 
the old cow broke into a keen gallop, and 
almost before Stubby knew what had hap- 
pened the herd was ten rods away, going for 
the barn like stampeded steers. 

Then Stubby thought of his own safety, 
and he started for the barn as though the 
panther had been upon his trail instead of 
the old cow's back. He was taking a short 
cut home, parallel to the path the cows were 
following, so he could still hear their wild 
bellows and rapid hoof -beats, all of which 
lent energy to his sturdy legs. Over knolls 
and stones he bounded, as though running 
the race for life. 

Half-way to the barn he mounted a stone 
wall, and gave one frightened glance back- 
wards, to see if the panther had left the 
cows, for his own trail. 



THE GREAT CIRCUS CAT H7 

Then he saw a very strange thing, that 
both amazed and delighted him. The cows, 
in their headlong rush for the barn, had 
reached the same stone wall that he stood 
upon, and were about to pass through a pair 
of bars, which had been left down, with the 
exception of the top bar, that the cows 
passed under easily. 

As they swept through the barway like a 
whirlwind, the top bar caught the great cat 
under the chin, and brushed him off the old 
cow's back as though he had been a fly, 
while the herd galloped on with new energy. 

Stubby waited to see no more, but jump- 
ing from the wall, made the sprint of his life 
to the house. 

A moment later he burst into the dining- 
room, where the family were at supper, and, 
wild-eyed and speechless sank exhausted on 
the floor. 

As soon as he could speak, he gasped out 
his story to an amazed family circle. 

Stubby's father at once went to the barn, 
where the lacerated sides of old Crinklehorn 



118 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

told plainly that his story was only too 
true. 

There was great excitement in the village 
that evening when Stubby's adventure was 
related at the country store, and a hunt was 
planned for the next day that should rid the 
neighborhood of this furious beast. 

Old shot guns that had not been fired for 
years were pressed into service, heavily 
loaded with buckshot or slugs. 

To his father's astonishment, Stubby de- 
clared his intention to go with the hunting 
party. 

" Gracious, boy ! " exclaimed his father. 
" Didn't you get panther enough last night 
to last you twenty- four hours ? " But secret- 
ly he was pleased with his son's pluck. 

" Don't go, Herbert," pleaded his mother ; 
" you will be eaten alive." 

"I guess there won't nothin' happen to 
him if he sticks close to me," put in the 
boy's father. " I've got the old shotgun 
loaded with four slugs in each barrel, and I 
guess there won't no panther eat us up." 



THE GREAT CIRCUS CAT 119 

Better let him go, mother." So Herbert's 
mother gave her unwilling consent. 

" Guess I'll take along my pocket rifle/' 
said Stubby, " I'll feel safer with it." 

" Might as well try to shoot a rhinoceros 
with a popgun, as a panther with that thing, " 
said his father. But the boy slipped the 
little .22-caliber rifle under his coat and went 
with the hunting party. 

They had planned to beat the woods where 
the panther had appeared the night before, 
just as they do in India for tigers. So the 
party was strung out in a long line, each 
man two or three rods from his neighbor, 
and in this way they swept the woods from 
end to end. It was a new experience for 
most of them, and each man went with his 
gun cocked, and his heart in his mouth. The 
timid hunters insisted in making a great 
shouting, and the courageous said it was to 
frighten the panther away, for fear that they 
would see him. 

As for Stubby, his nerves tingled so that 
he doubted if he could even hit the tree con- 



120 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

taining the panther, let alone hitting the 
beast if he should see him. 

The forenoon was very hot, and it was 
hard work beating through the underbrush, 
so by noon they were a tired and disgusted 
lot. 

A council was then held, and it was de- 
cided to divide the party into two parts and 
one beat the neighboring woods while the 
remainder worked the maple grove still 
more. 

A hasty lunch was eaten, and they set to 
work again. 

By the middle of the afternoon the maple 
grove had been beaten from end to end, and 
the panther certainly was not there. So 
while others of the party went into a little 
swampy run near by, Stubby sat under a 
big hemlock resting. 

They had barely gotten out of sight when 
the boy noticed a movement in the branches 
of another large hemlock near the one under 
which he sat. Then one of the green tufted 
boughs sprung down as though a heavy 



THE GREAT CIRCUS CAT 121 

weight were upon it, opening a gap between 
it and the branch above, and what Stubby saw 
in the opening made his tongue cleave to the 
roof of his mouth, and his heart pound away 
at his ribs as though it would break through 
them. For there, upon a large limb of the 
hemlock, with his hind legs well under him 
and resting against the trunk of the tree, 
was the great circus cat. 

His tail was switching horribly, his fangs 
were bared as though for a snarl, and his 
eyes seemed to be measuring the distance 
between him and the boy. 

The moment his eyes met those of the pan- 
ther, Stubby's gaze was held as though by 
some will stronger than his own. He could 
not move, he could not cry out, all he could 
do was to sit there and wait until the panther 
should spring. 

Cold sweat stood upon his brow, and he 
felt sick and faint. He thought of his 
mother's prophecy, that he would be eaten 
alive. It looked as though it would be ful- 
filled. 



122 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

He felt that his only safety lay in looking 
directly at the panther ; perhaps some one 
would discover them before it was too late. 

Seconds seemed like minutes, and the 
quarter of a minute that elapsed an hour. 

Then Stubby thought of his little pocket 
rifle that lay upon the grass beside him, and 
felt for it with one hand, still keeping his 
eye on the panther. 

But as his arm went down for the rifle, the 
panther bent lower on the limb. He was 
going to spring. 

Then with a quick motion Stubby raised 
the rifle to the level of his eye, and pressed 
the trigger. Then in a frenzy of fright he 
pitched the little rifle into the bush, and 
sprang to his feet. His nimble legs had 
saved him the night before, and might now. 

Then the body of the great cat shot like 
a black streak through the air, and fell heav- 
ily at his feet. 

Stubby's legs sank under his weight, and 
it grew very dark. 

The next thing he remembered, his father 




THE PANTHER BENT LOWER ON THE LIMB. 



THE GREAT CIRCUS CAT 123 

was bending over him, fanning him with 
his palm-leaf hat, while some one else was 
sprinkling brook-water in his face, from a 
wet handkerchief. He was not mortally 
wounded, as he at first thought, or even 
scratched, only his head was light, and 
things looked strange. 

After a few moments he was able to sit up 
and tell his story. 

" You say you fired at him with the pop- 
gun, did you ? " asked Stubby's father. 

"Yes," replied the boy, "I aimed right 
between his eyes, just as I have read about in 
books." 

"Made a mighty big sight of noise for a 
twenty-two," remarked some one in the 
crowd. 

" Wal, the panther's dead," said Stubby's 
father, " and I don't see but the boy's bullet 
did it." 

"Look at this here wound," said another. 
"Bullet went in just behind the shoulder, 
square through the heart, and came out the 
other side. Don't look like a twenty-two 



124: STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

either. That warn't no popgun that did 
that." 

" Where is old Ben Wilson, from over to 
Edgewood ? " asked some one in the party. 
6 ' He knows all about such things, he can 
tell what kind of a bullet made the hole." 

A shout went around for Ben, but he was 
nowhere to be found. 

Then one of the Basset boys said, "I 
vum ! " and slapped his side. 

"I have it," he cried. "I just saw Ben 
myself, sorter skulking off through the woods 
towards home, and if I ain't mightily mis- 
taken Ole Kentucky was still a smokin'. 
Anyhow I saw Ben lift the hammer, and 
throw away the cap, an 5 he wouldn't have 
done that if it had been a good one." 

Here then was the secret of the mystery. 
Ben had happened along just in time to see 
Stubby's plight, and had rescued him by a 
lucky shot with his famous hunting rifle that 
he called "Ole Kentuck." 

To make sure that this was the case, a 
committee was at once sent to interview Ben. 



THE GREAT CIRCUS CAT 125 

But, to their great astonishment, that quiet 
old man would say nothing about it, either 
one way or the other. 

u We want to give you a vote of thanks 
and the skin," said the chairman. "Now 
tells us, did you kill the panther ? " 

" Can't say as I did," replied Ben. "I 
hain't seen no dead panther. 'Twould be 
mighty hard to say. There ain't nothin' 
sure in this world, ceptin' death and taxes. 
But you folks just go back an' ask Stubby 
about it. He got the panther's eye and I 
didn't. 

"Mebbe he winked at him. You just 
ask Stubby." 



CHAPTER IX 

SIGNS IN THE SNOW 

Old Ben and I were tramping along in the 
deep snow, " going Injun file," as he ex- 
pressed it, on our way to the woods. 

He was ahead, and as he was a sort of 
pathfinder, and prophet of the woods, in my 
eyes, I was stepping in his tracks, although 
they were rather too far apart for comfort. 
I wished to be considered a pathfinder and a 
woodsman myself, so I would not have ad- 
mitted that the steps were too long for me, 
if I had fallen by the way. Even though 
the stride was long, it was easier going in 
this way because Ben's big boot made a good 
track in which I could follow lightly. 

" When there is snow on the ground," 

said Ben, as we crunched along, " there ain't 

a four-footed creature in the woods or out of 

126 



SIGNS IN THE SNOW 127 

it, for that matter, but tells you all his busi- 
ness whenever he goes anywhere. 

"It is as interestin' to poke around the 
woods in the winter and see what our four- 
footed friends are doin', as it is to stay at 
home and read stories about them, and rather 
more so. For out here in the woods you can 
see for yourself, and besides, a great many 
things that you read in books are not more 
than half true. But a track never lies, and 
the best way is to see for yourself. 

"Now, Harry," continued Ben in his ac- 
customed way of drawing me out, "what 
would you say could be learned from 
tracks?" 

"Why, that something had been along," I 
replied. 

Ben whistled. " Is that all ? Scratch your 
head, boy, and try again." 

" If you knew the different kinds of tracks, 
you could tell whether it was a fox or a 
rabbit, but I should think that was all," I 
said. 

"I am afeered you will hev to rub up 



128 STOEIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

them woodsman's specks a bit," said Ben, "if 
you are going to get on in finding out about 
the wild things. There are four or five things 
that every track tells you as soon as you 
clap eyes on it. If you know how to read 
tracks, it doesn't matter whether it's a rab- 
bit's tracks or a fox's, it is all the same. 

" You can tell which way the animal was 
going, how long ago he passed, if he was in 
a hurry, if he was a large or small creature 
of the kind, and many times you will detect 
peculiarities in the particular animal that 
others of his kind don't have." 

I opened my eyes wide with astonishment. 
I had not believed it was possible to learn so 
many things merely from a track, but I knew 
it must be true, for Ben had said so, and it 
made me all eagerness to find out about it so 
that I might confound the rest of the boys 
with my knowledge. 

" Wal, we don't want to be in a hurry," 
continued my companion. " There ain't ever 
anything gained by being in a hurry in the 
woods. Ten to one you won't see what you 



SIGNS IN THE SNOW 129 

are after if you are in a hurry. I suppose 
the science of tracks was carried further by 
the Indians than any other people. They 
depended upon it to find out all about their 
enemies, as well as the animals they hunted. 
The tracks of folks are harder to read than 
those of animals, because they are shod alike, 
while the wild creatures leave their naked 
footprints. Besides, men all travel something 
alike, while the wild things have a different 
way of traveling. The rabbit hops, the fox 
trots when he is not in a hurry, and the cat 
tribe jump. 

u I think we had better begin by learning 
the different tracks, and then we will observe 
each particularly. 

" See that T shaped track under this laurel 
bush, with four paw-prints in a bunch. That 
is a rabbit track, and there ain't no other 
animal in the woods that makes that kind 
of a track. The gray rabbits and the white 
ones make the same kind of a track, only the 
gray rabbit's track is smaller. He usually 

lives in the spruces at the edge of the woods, 
9 



130 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

while the white rabbit likes the laurel swamp 
and lives near it. You see when the rabbit 
hops, and one fore paw comes just behind 
the other, just as a horse's forward hoofs go 
when he gallops, that gives us the two paw- 
prints that make the shank of the T. Then 
his hind paws he spreads out, making the top 
of the T. So you see the shank of the T 
always points in the direction the rabbit is 
going. If the jumps are far apart the rabbit 
is in a hurry, or if the hind paw-prints are 
well up to the forward ones that means the 
same thing, but the track usually is a per- 
fect T. 

" The track of a fox is even and measured 
without he is in a hurry, and even then it is 
about the same, for he is an easy-going fel- 
low, and particular about his gait. His track 
is often taken for that of a small dog or a large 
cat, but there are certain signs about it that 
a woodsman always knows. The footprint 
is depressed more at the front than that of 
a dog or cat, showing that the fox stands 
well up, on his toes, and touches the ground 



SIGNS IN THE SNOW 131 

lightly. The pads of the paw are not as 
noticeable as in the track of a dog, the foot 
being furred ; and last of all, the track 
usually makes off straight across the country, 
as though the fox was goin' somewhere, 
which is the case. A young fox will play like 
a kitten, but an old fox goes methodically 
about his business with a good plan in his 
crafty head. 

"Occasionally you will see a scraggly 
track, near some bush or stone. Each foot- 
print has four strokes leading out from a 
center. It looks so much like the tracks the 
hens make about the yard after the first snow 
that you will readily guess what made it. It 
is a partridge. Maybe there is a blur in the 
snow where his wings struck when he started 
to fly. 

"There are also the prints of small mis- 
chievous feet on the tops of the walls and 
fences, where some red squirrel has warmed 
himself, by taking a morning run. 

"The grayer is scarcely ever seen in the 
winter, but Chippy occasionally comes out 



132 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

of his hole to see how the winter is get-tin' 
along, and if there are any signs of spring. 

" Sometimes you will see a wee bit of a track 
running out from under a stone, going a few 
feet, and returnin' to the hole it came from. 
Some inquisitive mouse has been forth, to 
see what was doin' in the world outside. 

" But most of the wild things keep as close 
as possible in the winter, staying in sheltered 
places, among spruces or pines, while some 
come to the house and share the outbuildings 
with man. If you encourage them to come 
you can have a fine little menagerie all 
winter long." 

" I should think lots of them would freeze, 
and starve in the winter," I said. " Do they 
all get through safely ? " 

"More than you would think, Harry," re- 
plied my friend ; " but it ain't all pie an' cake 
in the woods either, for if the rabbit is hun- 
gry, so is the fox and the owl, and they both 
have their eye on the cottontail. Mebbe it 
happens when he and a score of his friends 
are playing tag in the moonlight. I hev 



SIGNS IN THE SNOW 133 

often seen urn, racin' an' chasin', hevin 5 the 
finest kind of games. Then a swift lithe 
figure would flash through the underbrush, 
and before they knew, it was right among 
them. Then there was a race for blood. 
Out an' in they would rush, pell-mell, till 
them wicked jaws closed upon the soft fur, 
then a cry for all the world like that of a 
baby would startle the woods with heart- 
breaking pathos, an' then all would be quiet, 
without you heard the crunchin' of bones in 
the thicket near by. 

" It is mighty strange how much the cry of 
a rabbit sounds like that of a baby. Fust 
time I heard it I spent more'n half an hour 
lookin' for the baby that I thought some one 
had been mean enough to leave in the 
woods." 

"What was it that got the rabbit that 
time ? "I asked. 

" Why, Reynard. He hunts all winter 
long, and many a bloody trail he leaves in 
the woods. Sometimes it is strewn with par- 
tridge feathers, or mebbe it is the white fur 



134 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 



A 



of the cottontail. Mebbe he is sittin' by 
his own doorway, under a bunch of laurel, 
watchin' the moonlight on the snow and 
thinking what he would do if it was gone. 

" The wind sings a weird song in the leaf- 
less forest and the snow and the silver moon- 
light give things a sickly, ghastly look, but 
the rabbit does not mind that, for the laurel 
swamp is his home. Then a feathered form, 
swift and silent as death, swoops down out of 
the top of a spruce, where it had been com- 
pletely hidden by the dark plumes. Before 
the rabbit has time to even look up and see 
what makes the shadow on the snow, the 
talons of an owl are buried in his neck. 
Then the night woods are again startled by 
that piteous cry. The struggle is short and 
desperate, but the owl has too good a hold, 
and he is too hungry to let his prey off easily, 
so in a few seconds he flies away with his 
supper. 

"Perhaps the next night, when the stars 
prick through the steely sky, to see what 
man is about, there is a tawny gray bunch 




A WILDCAT LOOKING FOR HIS SUPPER. 



SIGNS IN THE SNOW 135 

on the upper side of a fallen tree trunk. The 
tree does not lie upon the ground but is held 
up some six or eight feet, by the limbs on 
the under side of the trunk. What is it, do 
you suppose ? It matches so well with the 
gray of the tree trunk, and the general sober 
tint of the leafless brown woods, that it at- 
tracts little attention ; it is probably a burl, 
or almost anything without life. 

" But don't be too sure that this motion- 
less bunch has not got life. If you look care- 
fully you will see two square-topped ears 
lying close to the head, and two burning 
eyes, that devour the rabbit path which runs 
under the fallen tree trunk. It is a wildcat 
and he too is looking for supper. 

11 Now he crouches lower to the log if possi- 
ble, and his eyes burn even more fiercely. 
You did not hear anything, but he did ; it is 
coming this way. Underneath that gray 
bunch of soft fur are quivering muscles, and 
cushioned in those velvet paws are the worst 
set of claws in the woods. As slight as the 
forearm is, one blow of that paw would kill 



136 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

the strongest fox-hound that ever followed 
scent. 

" There is a patter in the snow, and Mr. Cot- 
tontail comes hopping along, his ears erect. 
He is on his way to visit a neighbor. Then 
the muscles in the gray bunch tighten, and 
the cat springs. 

" There is no outcry this time, for the rab- 
bit's back is broken at the first bite." 

We had stopped to rest at a pile of cord- 
wood, which made a convenient seat, while 
Ben told me of what was doing in the woods 
of a winter's night. Presently he caught my 
expression, which must have been solemn, 
and began laughing. 

" Sorter hard life, ain't it, Harry ? " he 
said cheerfully, "but that ain't all. For 
some fine morning men will come with 
hounds, and then the woods will be filled 
with the baying of dogs and the roar of shot- 
guns. 

" But don't you think for a moment, boy, 
that the rabbit don't hev a good time in his 
way, but it ain't the way of folks. I hain't 



SIGNS IN THE SNOW 137 

a doubt but what he takes as much sport 
playing tag in the woods as you do in the 
schoolyard, while as for being gobbled up 
by a cat or an owl only a few of them go that 
way, when we think of all there are in the 
woods. Besides, it is their life. They are 
born to it. It is as much their game to 
match their cunning agin that of the fox or 
the hawk, as it is man's to battle for bread, 
or boy's to play football. Life is a battle 
whatever way you consider it. It ain't alius 
strength that wins either, but wit goes a 
mighty long ways. Why, there is the par- 
tridge, he ain't no match for hawks or owls 
in a fight, but he has got wits, and they keep 
him out of the way of his enemies, and I 
rather imagine that he enjoys slipping out of 
one side of a cover when the owl comes flop- 
ping in at the other. 

" Then there is the fox, swift and sly as he 
is, yet many a time he goes without his sup- 
per, because his prey has either wings or 
wits. 

" So after all, Harry, you see the Maker of 



138 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

the sparrow and the hawk has given each 
powers that the other does not possess, and 
in the struggle for existence, that always has 
raged in the woods, and always will, they 
are pretty evenly matched, for the race is not 
always to the swift or the battle to the 
strong." 



CHAPTER X 

SIGNS OF THE SEASONS 

A happy, barefooted boy was spanking 
along a country road, doing what Old Ben 
called, observing the signs of the times. 

" Alius be a lookin' out for what's coming," 

that wise old man had told him. " If spring 

is here, summer is coming. If autumn is 

with us, look out for winter. An' I don't 

mean by that not to enjoy the season that we 

have to the full, for this particular season 

will never come again. There will never be 

another summer or winter just like this one, 

so enjoy it while it lasts. But what I mean 

is, be on the lookout for the changes. Learn 

to forestall the wind and the weather, and 

let no season steal a march on you. If some 

morning winter comes howling down upon 

you, be able to tell him : ' You didn't fool me, 
139 



140 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

old chap, I have seen you coming for days, 
and you made yesterday so fine just to try 
and fool me. 5 " 

So this barefooted boy, as he scampered 
along the country road, was observing the 
oncoming spring. 

Spring always made him feel glad. Just 
as the flowers under the sod felt its touch, so 
did the boy's heart. Something of the bird- 
song that thrilled the woods was in his voice. 

The particular thing that he was enjoying 
now was the delicious fragrance of swamp 
pink, that came stealing mysteriously out of 
the woods. He never could understand how 
it was that a plant could give away so much 
of itself in odor, and still seem to have just 
as much left, but Ben had told him that it 
was just so with folks. That the more 
kindness any one gave the more he had to 
give. 

This boy would not have believed it if you 
had told him a year before that there was so 
much to enjoy in simply walking to school, 
but his walks and talks with Ben had taught 



SIGNS OF THE SEASONS 141 

him many things, some of them more valu- 
able than the lessons he learned in the school- 
house. 

Now, if he saw a robin flying across the 
road with a worm in his mouth, he at once 
pictured the nest and the little ones with 
mouths outstretched, ready for breakfast, 
and somehow the nest-robbing instinct had 
gone out of him. He had always remembered 
what Ben had told him. ' ' For every egg that 
you take from the nest there will be one less 
bird to sing to you the coming summer." 

This morning he had seen some queer little 
tracks by the brookside, and had followed 
them down into the swale, to be rewarded by 
finding a muskrat's house. On the way back 
to the road he had snapped a pebble into a 
ripple, and a beauty of a trout had jumped 
for it as he had hoped. 

By the roadside he had stopped for checker- 
berries and partridge berries, while a spruce 
had yielded up gum enough for both him and 
his fellows. 

A squirrel had winked at him as he passed 



142 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

under the tree on which it sat, and this 
had made him feel like one of the Wood 
Folks. 

A flicker had been sounding his lively rat- 
a-tat-tat on a dead limb and it was always 
pleasant to hear this merry woodchopper. 

So you see this morning walk was full of 
wonders, and the boy had been able to enjoy 
them because of Old Ben's training. 

Presently he left the woods behind and 
came out into open mowings, where there 
was an apple orchard on one side of the road, 
and corn stubble on the other. They were 
ploughing the stubble to-day, and the earth 
looked mellow and inviting. A score of birds 
had taken the ploughman at his word, and 
were helping themselves in a bounteous 
manner. Prominent among them were robins 
and purple grackles. 

Then high and clear above all the other 
sounds of oncoming spring that filled the 
morning the boy heard a sound new to his 
ears. 

Strong, steady, and full. 




' HONK, HONK, HONK! " 



SIGNS OF THE SEASONS 143 

" Honk, honk, honk!" 

He looked in the tree-tops and across the 
fields, first in this direction and then in that, 
but nothing could he see that should make 
such a strange sound. 

But still the sound went on, steady and 
measured as before, " Honk, honk, honk! " 

It seemed to be coming nearer. Then he 
got upon the wall, and his eager eyes swept 
the sky in every direction. Away to the 
south, he saw a long procession of something 
that looked about the size of a flock of spar- 
rows. They were up very high, and coming 
directly towards him. 

But while he watched, the birds grew 
steadily larger, and he saw that the procession 
was wedge-shaped, the two sides of the wedge 
trailing out far behind. 

On, on the flock came, flying strong and 
steady. Their flight was as straight as an 
arrow, and reminded one of the furrow that 
an ocean liner might leave on the deep. They 
were probably steering by some lake or river 
miles away, and did not care to make even 



144 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

slight turns. When they cared to change their 
course they would haul a point to the east or 
west, and the casual observer on the green 
earth below would not notice the differ- 
ence. 

On, on they came, like the wind, sweeping 
the heavens in matchless flight, all the time 
pealing the slogan of lake or river. " Honk, 
honk, honk ! " Their heads were thrust for- 
ward like race horses, and their legs were 
held well back under them to escape the rush 
of wind. " Ninety miles an hour ! " thought 
the boy. Why, the first hoarse cry that 
signaled the start upon this flight might 
have been given last evening, upon the banks 
of the Chattahoochee, or along the marshy 
sedges of some lagoon in the Everglades of 
Florida. The fastest express train would 
have barely reached Washington, while this 
tireless squadron was swinging over the 
hills and valleys of Massachusetts at a rate 
that would cross the entire State from south 
to north, in less than an hour. The express 
train would puff, roar, and hiss, and every 



SIGNS OF THE SEASONS 145 

few score miles, would stop to rest its heated 
bearings and oil its joints. But this mag- 
nificent machine neither puffed nor paused. 
There was no hissing or snorting, only that 
steady stroke of tireless wings, and the wild 
cry of " Honk, honk, honk ! " 

The slogan of the waterfowls grew fainter 
and fainter as they swept on, until it was 
lost in the distance. But the boy still watched 
the threadlike line that hung for a few 
seconds on the northern horizon, and then 
vanished altogether. When it had entirely 
disappeared, he heaved a deep sigh and 
rubbed his eyes, which were tired with strain- 
ing after the flying harrow. Then he slowly 
got down from the wall, and trudged on to 
school, but there was a serious look on his 
face, and he felt something almost akin to 
reverence for the beauties and mysteries of 
nature ; something of that awe which the 
mariner feels as he guides his bark under 
the starless sky, across black waters, merely 
by the chart and compass. 

Fragments of the beautiful poem that he 
10 



146 STORIES OF THE GOOD GREENWOOD 

had learned to recite the last day of the term 
before came unbidden to his lips : 

Whither 'midst falling dew, 
While glow the heavens with the last steps of day, 
Far, through their rosy depths, dost thou pursue 

Thy solitary way ? 

Vainly the fowler's eye 
Might mark thy distant flight to do thee wrong, 
As, darkly painted on the crimson sky, 

Thy figure floats along. 
****** 

All day thy wings have fanned, 
At that far height, the cold thin atmosphere, 
Yet stoop not, weary, to the welcome land, 

Though the dark night is near. 
****** 

He who, from zone to zone, 
Guides through the boundless sky thy certain flight, 
In the long way that I must tread alone 

Will lead my steps aright. 

THE END. 







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